The Mycenaean

Leesville Road High School requires all English classes to host socratic seminars for their students. A socratic seminar is a collaborative conversation between students while focusing on one text. 

Up until the 2024-2025 school year, Leesville offered Paideia to freshman students. In the Paideia class, students who wanted to participate in discussions and take an analytical viewpoint on English texts were grouped together. Leesville no longer offers this class — academic, honors and paideia students are now in blended classes. 

Blending these students interferes with the quality of seminars and text based discussions. 

I observed a seminar over the text To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Mr. Broer’s freshman English class participated in the seminar with the goal of discussing the moral implications of the text. 

While observing the seminar, I noticed three key things: extensive preparation was required to provoke meaningful conversation, fewer students actively participated in the discussion, and those who had thoroughly read the book struggled to engage peers in deeper, more thoughtful dialogue.

Paideia students had a higher expectation before the seminar began. The class was structured to incorporate small group conversations everyday and work up to large, class discussions. 

In the blended English classes, many students do not want to speak. To aid them, Mr. Broer provided an extensive prep sheet including many sentence stems. 

Austin Wilkerson, freshman and one of Mr. Broer’s students said, “I hate seminars. I talk because there is a grade.”

This is the motivation of many students: a grade. Seminars are only effective if students want to speak, if they care about the book and take the time to digest the power of the words. Students need an intrinsic motivation to learn. 

A case study was done by professors from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Utah, Oregon State and Rowan University concluded that “students’ intrinsic motivations have positive effects on their performance.” Paideia kids tend to have more intrinsic motivation when it comes to analyzing, interpreting and communicating their thoughts. 

Kimora Page, freshman said, “I think the point of seminars is to try to get the message out of the book, and I think a good point is to try to talk to more people and build a connection with them.”

This student was very active in the seminar. She asked questions about silence and oppression of voice. She connected events in the book to a greater theme while adding to her peers’ interpretation of the story. 

Page said, “To Kill a Mockingbird, the main message I got is, to be taught right and try to do what’s right even if it’s an unpopular opinion.”

On the flip side, some students don’t care about the text. 

Wilkerson said, “You’re reading a book that you don’t really care about so it is just not interesting.”

When blending these students, it creates a weird standoff. In Mr. Broer’s seminar, two or three students dominated the discussion with insightful comments, while others stared at their papers. Eventually, there was a silence that provoked a very surface level conversation. These questions were the preplanned questions to “get the grade.”

Shreyas Iyengar was in Mr. Broer’s paideia class in the 2023-2024 school year. Now, he participated in seminars for his blended English class. 

Iyengar said, “There is some value in the seminars we still do but it is not the same as Paideia because there are not as many people contributing…. I miss those Paideia seminars.”

Blended English classes may be more convenient for the school system, but they risk losing the thoughtful conversations that once defined Paideia seminars. When only a few students prep and read the text to carry the conversation, the purpose of a seminar — discovery through discussion — is lost. 

As Leesville continues to reevaluate the English curriculum, it’s worth considering — how will we find a balance of passion and grade? Is it possible to find a solution that allows student discussions to thrive? 

Because in a seminar, every voice matters — but only if students want to be heard.