Socratic Seminar

   I believe that the Socratic Seminar helped a lot about understanding not the MAIN concept of the book, but little details, which is also okay and it's interesting to hear opinions.  I was very sick on Friday and I had no voice, which is why I couldn't contribute to the activity, but I was very impressed that we had very little awkward moments.  It was nice to hear people say their opinions, and if someone disagreed, it was very civil and the person would just explain why they think the way that they think and then we moved on.  I remember when we did a Socratic seminar for Mr. Phinizy's class in my 10th grade English class, it was the first time I've ever heard of anything like it and I very much enjoyed contributing as well as listening.

    Luckily, for the ERW Socratic seminar, it flowed perfectly, which is a surprise because it's first period and usually people are dead that early in the morning, but I was glad to listen to many different point of views and hear from a lot of people that I don't usually hear from daily.  Even though, we did kind of lose track and Mrs. Fletcher had to tell us twice how what we're talking about relates to the book, we did a great job explaining how it all ties together and why we think the way we think.

   We talked about surveillance and why it can and can't be a good thing.  I always thought that if we were under surveillance, it wouldn't really affect me at all because I have absolutely nothing to hide, and usually people that have something to hide and don't want to be under surveillance are doing something wrong, or they just think the idea behind it is creepy, but if we are all under surveillance, no one is going to pay attention to someone that isn't doing anything bad and make fun of them.  They're going to be doing their job.  Someone from the seminar brought up how they would be fine with being under surveillance because the government obviously doing it for the safety of us, they wouldn't just waste all that time and money on nothing.  I hadn't really thought of that, so it made me more on the side as to why not have us being under surveillance if there really is a threat nearby.

The Socratic seminar really brought out peoples thoughts in a comfortable environment and I wouldn't mind doing it again for future purposes.