Abstract The crisis of the digitization of human culture may be the most acute since the agricultural revolution that founded our civilization about ten thousand years ago. Given the tectonic nature of the current civilizational upheaval, it is not surprising that revolutionary transformations are taking place in education and pedagogy as well. Educational institutions increasingly rely on the technological possibilities of digitization in order to enrich or even replace traditional teaching methods. Such remarkable and seemingly effective innovations raise a critical question: which elements of the old world do we want to preserve and sustain in the new one? This article brings insights from Socratic pedagogy to bear on digital education, exploring the ways in which Socrates’ views on education and the limits of written language can assist in our attempts to strike a balance between the innovative technologies that will be integrated into education, and the traditional methods it would be wise to preserve, and perhaps even refine, in light of the Socratic pedagogical legacy. With a focus on the notion of ‘content’, the article argues that the digital sphere in which it is ubiquitous is characterized by passive consumption, undermining active and meaningful learning. The article then defends three principles of Socratic pedagogy—namely, its emphasis on moral improvement, dialogical encounters, and fostering active enquiry—as foundational for recalibrating educational priorities in this transformative era.
Jeremy Fogel (Thu,) studied this question.