Abstract

This exploratory study examines the hypothesis that Socratic pedagogy is a useful tool for imparting critical thinking and moral reasoning skills to inmates. The study explores the effectiveness of a new curriculum, Introducing Socrates, which relies on Socratic pedagogy to achieve its objectives. The curriculum draws from the effective criminal justice research on cognitive education to determine its objectives, and then looks to the Platonic dialogues to find broad philosophical questions that tie into those objectives. The program also evaluates salient criticisms of Socratic pedagogy that are found in the educational and philosophical literature, and then isolates and evaluates constructs from these criticisms in the study. ;Results of this study suggest that Introducing Socrates has the potential to help inmates by providing them with better options, by changing ways they approach problems, and by ultimately giving them tools that will enable them to make better decisions. Notably, no other inmate education treatment currently available is Socratically-based, either pedagogically or with regard to the course content. This is significant because Socratically-based programs have the potential to achieve the same objectives more efficiently, more cost-effectively, and in a more engaging way. This has obvious fiscal, social and psychological benefits for communities and individuals. In sum, this ancient educational and pedagogical approach, when combined with existing corrections educational objectives, may prove to be a uniquely powerful tool to help inmates generate better options to problems and make better choices---and to thus stay out of prison