Why the Seminar Method?
One of the distinctive features of the St. Jerome Institute is our insistence on using the seminar method in nearly every class. I would like to spend a little while elaborating on why we believe the seminar method is the best approach for modern high school students.
The Seminar Encourages Real Knowing
Let me proceed first by a definition. What is teaching? Though precise details vary, the most common definition in the western tradition is that teaching is the process by which a student is led from ignorance to knowledge. This definition is only as good, however, as what we think knowledge is. In the traditional view, knowledge is not just the accumulation of facts and figures, but involves some sort of process of internalization and ownership of the object that is known. Real knowledge happens when what is known becomes part of the learner and inhabits him. This is why we say that young children who are able to recite large pieces of information are merely “parroting” (speaking without understanding) and do not really “know” what they are speaking of. What you know becomes part of you, and you become responsible for it.
St. Thomas Aquinas describes teaching using the analogy of a doctor healing his patient. The doctor does not give health to his patient; he only provides the conditions for the patient’s own health to overcome illness. The doctor sets the bone, but it is the bone that heals itself. Similarly, the teacher leads and assists the student in using his own reason to come to know the truth. No teacher can force a student to learn; only the student can do it using his own reason.
What is the best way to cultivate this real learning in students? Fortunately, the tradition also has an answer to this: the best way to teach is by means of dialogue and rigorous questioning. It is a common experience that our greatest insights come in some form of dialogue, whether that is conversation, reading, or prayer. There is always a partner, an interlocutor, with whom we are thinking. We do not learn in isolation. We have ample evidence that this approach was taken by the greatest teachers. Socrates is obviously the example par excellence, but it is also the case that Aristotle, St. Thomas, and St. Don Bosco were all famous for their teaching through dialogue and conversation.
The reason that conversation and dialogue work so well for the development of knowledge is that we come to know through the process of expression and speaking. As almost all modern learning theory affirms, we do not first think and come to conclusions and then subsequently express ourselves in words, but the process of thinking happens only in expressed language. Words and symbols are not only the tools of thinking but thinking itself.
In pushing the students to speak and explain themselves, we are also pushing them to think clearly and come to know more deeply. We all have experienced the curious truth that by expressing ourselves clearly, we come to understand our object more intimately and internally. This is one of the reasons for the famous adage that you only really learn something when you have to teach it.
Although there are a variety of methods and ways to encourage conversation, it is our experience that the seminar does it best and can be easily augmented, when appropriate, by other methods. In our view, the best way to habituate good thinking and knowledge in students is by means of the so-called “seminar” method. The students are not passive recipients, but are responsible for teaching each other and themselves. By discussing material, they come to know it more deeply.
- The Practice of Seminar Assists in the Development of Virtue
The only way to develop a virtue, Aristotle tells us, is by practicing it. One could read every book about the virtue of courage, but one would be no closer to actually being courageous unless one practiced it. This is the case with all the virtues. We learn them by doing them.
I would argue that the seminar encourages the development of all the virtues, but, for now, let me only focus on two critically important virtues for youth: courage and humility.
When students enter SJI, the first poem they read together is Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” and then the teacher proceeds to ask them questions about it. Who is the speaker? When is this happening?
And then… Silence. No one speaks. The students wait for the teacher to buckle under the pressure of silence and elaborate what he means, give some hints, or even start to answer the questions. But the teacher never does. He sits in silence and waits. Finally, a tentative and slightly quivering voice pipes up and declares: “Well, I think the speaker is…” and then the seminar is off. But the students are silent, usually, not because they are not thinking anything but because they are afraid. Afraid of being wrong, afraid of looking foolish, afraid of what their peers might think of them.
Every time a student makes a daring argument, every time he offers his own thoughts to be considered by his peers, he is practicing courage. What often attends this development of courage is humility. True humility does not mean slavishness or subservience but rather the recognition of real weakness and a confidence that God has provided me with the assistance I need if I remain open to Him. That assistance, for the humble man, comes through correction. The humble student–the one who is comfortable knowing he is inadequate–dares to speak and is grateful for any improvement or correction.
It is beautiful to see the students open up to each other in humility and begin to see that they are more capable of discovering the truth together than alone. They see that their classmates are not judges and competitors but co-operators in truth. They are able to see that their own argument might be wrong–they might not see something even really basic–but we must begin somewhere and we will do it best if we do it together.
- A Good Seminar Cultivates Friendship
Just as we come to know what we think by means of speech, we also develop friendship by discussing and experiencing common things. Friendship is not erotic or possessive but tends to focus on something external that binds the two persons. If, then, the object of friendship is the latest transient fad, the union will only persist as long as the fad. Or, if our friendship is rooted in gossip, we can only be friends for as long as there are people for us to gossip about. This is why friendships built around gossip always become petty: there always needs to be more material for discussion and so the victim must be scrutinized in ever more minute detail so that even the slightest misstep is mocked.
Plato and Aristotle were deeply aware of this truth and emphasized that true friendship can only occur when two people are bound together by the good. They are both quite explicit, in fact, in saying that real friendship occurs when we are in dialogue about the true and good.
Sadly, many children and adolescents lack the opportunity to experience such friendships. Often, their friendships are mediated by advertising companies that exploit their relationships for the sake of profit. What we have found is that a good seminar helps students unite and bond over real things and questions. Since their friendships are rooted in something more than the latest meme, they tend to be more lasting and fulfilling.
But this method is, in fact, the hardest for teachers to master. It is much easier to write a powerpoint, have the students copy the material, and assess whether or not they remembered what they copied. And, in fact, you can proceed through material much more quickly using the traditional method. What does not happen with any regularity, however, in such a method is that the students internalize and come to know what is being taught.
This is why SJI places such an emphasis in helping our teachers develop the skills for seminar and coaching them in the best ways to do it. It is not a method and technique that comes naturally to teachers and it depends on the development of certain types of academic habits in the students for it to work well. This is a lengthy process and, in many ways, quite inefficient. In the end, however, it accomplishes the only real task for the teacher, which is to bring the student into real knowledge.
