When Donald Ainslie was chair of the philosophy department more than twenty years ago, little did he imagine the success of the Socrates Project, where the department’s best undergraduates experience the Socratic approach of learning philosophy by teaching philosophy by serving as teaching assistants (TAs) for an introductory philosophy course. And now, twenty years later, he is teaching the intro course, Ancient Wisdom, Modern Insights: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy (PHL 100), with Socrates Project TAs.
“The students in the class benefit from having peers as TAs, while the TAs have the opportunity for that special kind of Socratic insight that comes with teaching the subject,” says Ainslie.
Inspired by Plato’s description of the Socratic method – using conversation and dialogue to understand philosophy – the project typically hires 8–10 senior undergraduate students each year out of a highly competitive pool of applicants. They not only conduct weekly tutorials but take a fourth-year seminar exploring the latest research on topics covered in the intro course with department experts. In the second term, the Socrates Project students prepare a research paper aided by a faculty advisor.
Ainslie introduced the Socrates Project to ensure that undergraduate classes had more tutorials. Typically, students learned from one another in a conversation moderated by a more experienced student like a graduate student. But the department did not have enough graduate students for the number of tutorials the department needed. He also wanted to provide a capstone experience for philosophy majors and specialists. The Socrates Project met both needs perfectly.
Mark Kingwell, who was teaching PHL100 when the Project was first introduced, initially questioned its rationale. “I feared it was a form of exploitation of the students’ ambition, and took work away from graduate students,” he says. “As it turns out, both of these worries were wide of the mark.”
Kingwell, who describes the 5th-century BCE Greek philosopher as the hero to the discipline, underscores the Project’s approach. “You learn a lot more about a subject when you have to teach it. This is all the more true in philosophy, which prides itself on dialogic engagement.”
“What the students are trained to do is engage with the students in their tutorial sections in something like the way Socrates did,” says Jim John who used Socrates Project TAs in his PHL101, What Should I Believe? Topics in Philosophy course, for a few years. “They help their students to have conversations about these deep, difficult, but fascinating questions.”
While funding from the Provost’s Student Experience Fund allowed the Project to start as a pilot project, it became more than an experiment once it won the University of Toronto Alumni Association’s prestigious Northrop Frye Award of Excellence for departmental initiatives in 2009. The award recognizes individuals and programs that creatively join teaching and research. The Project was described to exemplify “Northrop Frye’s conviction that teaching and learning are inseparable.”
Sofia McTaggart, who just completed her year as a PHL100 TA last year and is joining the department as an MA student, agrees. “Teaching others is an incredibly effective learning strategy,” she says.
To prepare for her students, McTaggart points out that she had to have both an in-depth understanding of the material and a plan to present philosophical concepts, which are often difficult and complex, especially to students who were struggling.
“I feel that I have learned more philosophy by doing the Socrates Project than I have by taking any other standard undergraduate course,” says McTaggart.
Former TA Evelyn Maude feels the same. “A lot of it is you’re responsible for other people’s learning of this material, so you better know it at a higher level yourself.”
Despite the pressure to perform in front of peers, TAs act as role models for the mostly first-year students they teach. They show students what is possible in university.
“It felt quite easy to connect with students and to understand their experience,” says McTaggart. “After all, not so long ago, I was a first-year student enrolled in this very course, studying a lot of the same content.”
As important as running the tutorials for the undergraduate TAs is the seminar, which focuses on preparing them with subject matter expertise, discussing pedagogy, and preparing the research essay. For example, the week before the work of 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant is taught in PHL100, faculty member and Kantian scholar Nick Stang would come and discuss the main issues in the field as well as what contemporary scholars are considering.
What makes the Project special is the small cohort. Sara Aronowitz, a former TA and current Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair at U of T, recalls the camaraderie she encountered with her peers.
“It was also a unique experience to not just work with a mentor but also have a small group of students that were going through the ups and downs of first time teaching together,” she says. “In fact, I barely felt like it was work because of how it was integrated with learning.”
Many former Socrates Project TAs found the program to be an excellent training ground for a future career in academe. Maude, currently doing a PhD at Harvard University, remembers her time as a TA fondly. “It was a way to test the waters to see if you can succeed at and enjoy teaching philosophy.”
For the TAs, the Socrates Project is often seen as a highlight of their degree. And after twenty years, the benefits of the program, which was later expanded to University of Toronto Mississauga and University of Toronto Scarborough, are obvious for the department.
“It really is a testament to the quality and dedication of our best philosophy majors, and I’m proud that we stand behind them solidly enough to entrust them with leading our tutorial sections,” says Peter King, professor emeritus and one of the faculty most associated with teaching PHL 100 in the early days of the program.
“It was a classic win-win-win situation, for the students and the TAs and the professor, but in many ways, I think the Socrates Project participants won the most of all.”
Image: Carlos Blanco, Flickr