Learning to Create Connection
Early in my career, I spent part of a summer at an National Endowment for the Humanities seminar devoted to reading dialogues of Plato and discussing their ethical implications. Our group of a dozen teachers was given four weeks to live and study together on a college campus, discussing readings in the morning, writing reflections during lunch, and having conversations in the afternoon. Discussion would continue at dinner, and into the late evening. This was the routine—just an endless conversation, occasionally interrupted by meals, exercise, and sleep.
Even in my 20s, I knew how lucky I was to be given a month of government-supported inquiry into what Plato had to say about ethics. Our group—drawn from schools across the country—wouldn’t stop yapping about the possibilities and difficulties of applying ancient philosophy to contemporary circumstances. It was nerdy and challenging and taxing, and we all embraced it.
All of us, that is, except one participant. This colleague would not return to the dorm to continue the conversation; instead, he would head off to the college’s library, collect some materials, and then shut himself in his dorm room for the night. We initially worried that we were somehow alienating this member, but eventually we figured that our colleague simply just needed some time to themselves. After all, the days were long, and no one needed to feel compelled to stay with the group from sunup to sundown.
Eventually we determined that our colleague was using the library to search out additional research in the hopes of finding some obscure interpretation of the next day’s text. And this is how it would play out: Our colleague would sit, silently, as a dozen of us puzzled through some argument with varying degrees of success. Then, he would pounce, deliver his prepared zinger, and then sit in silence for the rest of the session, his job evidently done.
“Socratic learning requires patience and trust and hard work, and is the surest path to connection, to growth, to aspiration, and to academic and intellectual excellence.”
Some participants were confused at his behavior; others, irritated. But for everyone there was also a sense of sadness that our colleague was missing the entire point of coming together. Everyone was working hard, in their own way, but seeking different ends: We were reveling in the chance to play with ideas, to know each other better, and to try out philosophical interpretations which were simultaneously limited, fragile, and hopeful; our colleague, on the other hand, seemed intent on “winning.” While most of us left the seminar tired, but joyful, he just seemed empty and worn out.
Very often, it is good studentship to do extra research, call upon expert opinion, or seek precision and finality in one’s answers; this is why we always encourage our kids to do their best. But doing one’s best shouldn't mean viewing classmates as foes, seeking personal accolades over genuine conversation, or using learning to create distance rather than connection. There is a richer, more rewarding definition of what “doing our best” can mean.
This definition emerges from Socates, the protagonist of Plato’s writings. For Socrates, learning proceeds through dialogue and partnership, not debate and competition. It requires enduring curiosity and vulnerability, and trades premature conclusions and close-mindedness for earnest questions and openness to the new. It seeks knowledge and understanding not for social status, but as guides for living well with others, for recognizing meaning, and for developing one’s own voice in the world. Socratic learning requires patience and trust and hard work, and is the surest path to connection, to growth, to aspiration, and to academic and intellectual excellence. Ironically enough, this is what my competitive colleague simply couldn’t see, and it is what Browning wants for all of its boys: The opportunity to find joy in thinking and working together, to be consumed by the life of the mind, and to build one’s own understanding and perspective on things: What our world is, how it got that way, and what it all means. Like our seminar so many years ago, that would be time well-spent.