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When I looked into them, I did not find these books were Socratic/Inquiry-based. My perception is that a typical question-answer would not be of the kind I see

When I looked into them, I did not find these books were Socratic/Inquiry-based. My perception is that a typical question-answer would not be of the kind I see in such a classroom. In a classroom I might ask "What should be the precedence among these arithmetic operators?" Then there would be some discussion, leading eventually to a sensible answer. But in the little books (I don't have one to hand so I'm making this up) a question would be more along the line of "What is a frame?" This would be the first question in the section introducing the topic. There is no way students could answer that, or ask it. That is, what I find compelling about this way of instruction is that it leads students to the point. It is as if they discovered it themselves, in a way. (It is sometimes called Discovery method.) They see the wrong stuff as well as the right and that gives a better understanding of why right is right. I don't know how Prof Friedman handles it in class. Possibly the in-person process is quite different than I felt reading the book. But reading the book I just felt it was a tortured way of telling me the facts.

Jtsummers 9y ago
I think a benefit to asking a question a student can't answer yet ("What is an atom?") is that it gets students accustomed to saying "I don't know". Which every student (whether young or old) needs to be able to say. By admitting a lack of knowledge, and not feeling self-conscious about it, the next step is to fill in the gap. In the Schemer books that's what the next series of questions (almost?) always seem to do, with a final question ("What is an atom?"). And now the student can answer it. A secondary benefit is that, should you already have some basics, you can often figure out which portions you can skip over by how well your answer matches the one in the book.
agumonkey 9y ago
You're right that a good chunk of the questions were a bit rhetorical and sometimes impossible to guess. And I approve that leading students to come themselves with intuitions is very important. But I believe the goal was to emphasize the notion of chaining succint and precise predicates to construct a larger abstraction.

Jtsummers 9y ago

I think a benefit to asking a question a student can't answer yet ("What is an atom?") is that it gets students accustomed to saying "I don't know". Which every student (whether young or old) needs to be able to say. By admitting a lack of knowledge, and not feeling self-conscious about it, the next step is to fill in the gap. In the Schemer books that's what the next series of questions (almost?) always seem to do, with a final question ("What is an atom?"). And now the student can answer it. A secondary benefit is that, should you already have some basics, you can often figure out which portions you can skip over by how well your answer matches the one in the book.

agumonkey 9y ago

You're right that a good chunk of the questions were a bit rhetorical and sometimes impossible to guess. And I approve that leading students to come themselves with intuitions is very important. But I believe the goal was to emphasize the notion of chaining succint and precise predicates to construct a larger abstraction.