A Socratic Seminar is a form of teaching and learning.  Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher, believed that students learned the best when they had to think for themselves.  Socrates would respond to student questions not with answers, but rather with more questions.  Rather than the teacher simply filling the students’ heads with ideas, students form their own thoughts and share them with their peers.  Students examine a group of texts and share dialogue to come to a better understanding.

 

Guiding Questions

1. Is the “American Dream” something real for immigrants to the USA?
2. What is the impact of stereotypes on our American society?
3. Is Yunior the narrator of every chapter in Drown? Does it matter?
4. What is Junot Diaz saying about the immigrant experience in the USA in his book Drown?
5. Is the USA hypocritical for being a country created by immigrants but requiring a complicated immigration policy today?

 

Readings

The fact that I
am writing to you
in English
already falsifies what I
wanted to tell you.
My subject:
how to explain to you that I
don’t belong to English
though I belong nowhere else

-Gustavo Perez Firmat

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightening, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twice cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp1” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

 –Emma Lazarus

 Unguarded Gates

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates
And through them presses a wild, motley throng—
Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,
Fearless figures of the Hoang-Ho,
Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav,
Flying the Old World’s poverty and scorn;
These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,
Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.
In the street and alley what strange tongues are loud,
Acents of menace alien to our air,
Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!

O Liberty, white Goddess! Is it well
To leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast
Fold Sorrow’s children, soothe the hurts of hate,
Lift the down-trodden, but with hands of steel
Stay those who to thy sacred portals come
To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a care
Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn
And trampled in the dust. For so of old
The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome,
And where the temples of the Caesars stood
The lean wolf unmolested made her lair.

 –Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907)

FIND THE ENTIRE ASSIGNMENT DOCUMENT HERE: 4.8.14 Socratic Seminar ENG III