1984 Socratic Seminar Reflection 1

Laura Schwartz

Period 1

4/28/14

1984 Socratic Seminar 1 Reflection

This seminar influenced my way of thinking because I began to think more about what it would be like to live in a dystopia. The socratic seminar also helped me understand dystopias more because people asked good questions about the society in 1984, which helped me understand more about overall dystopias. One thing that made me think more in depth was when someone asked about the children in the book of 1984. Someone asked about whether our generation was going down the same path that the children in 1984 were on. I had never thought of the possibility of that happening, so I had to think hard about whether we were actually heading in that direction as a society.

One statement that I agreed with was that 1984 was based off of the totalitarian regimes during World War II. I thought that the book was based off of the totalitarian regimes such as the ones in Germany, Russia, and Spain, especially since Orwell wrote the book shortly after World War II. One statement that I disagreed with was when someone said that they thought the United States was too big to be taken over by a totalitarian ruler or party. If I had the chance to respond to that statement, I would have said that Russia had a totalitarian regime and Russia is the largest country in the world. I would have added on that China also developed a totalitarian regime and it is the fourth largest country in the world. In other words, I think that any country is vulnerable to being taken over by a form of totalitarian government or an authoritarian leader. I would have said this if I had the chance to respond because I felt like that statement was very naive and somewhat silly.

I thought that everyone did a good job of respecting each others’ opinions. I think another thing that went well for the seminar was that everyone prepared their own questions. Because people prepared their own questions, there was a lot of variety in the types of things that were asked and discussions that we had. Another thing that I thought went well was the use of rhetorical devices in our discussion, mainly because it was our first time trying to highlight using rhetorical devices and I think we all did well for our first time doing that. Lastly, I thought that the half time worked well because it helped people become more aware of what they could work on for the second half of the seminar.

One thing that could use improvement is getting 100% participation. Not everyone in our circle spoke, which I thought was kind of disappointing because everyone was respectful and I felt like everyone had the chance to speak, yet not everyone spoke. Another thing that could use a little more improvement is trying to appeal to the rhetorical devices, ethos and pathos more because I felt like we primarily focused on logos. Overall, I thought that this socratic seminar was good and there was not much that we had to improve upon.