Writing about Plato (part 2)

This week, I’m working with these steps of breaking down and using source material.

I ended with this last time:

In the Phaedrus, Plato explains the invention of writing through a dialogue between Theuth, the inventor, and Thamus, the king who is skeptical of writing.  One aspect of this criticism is that people who use written letters “will be hearers of many things . . .[but they] will have learned nothing” (Jowett 1).

The passage tells my reader exactly where--out of all the possible texts in the world--my thinking is starting: Plato, the Phaedrus, the story of the invention of writing, the specific part where he talks about hearing and learning.

In many ways the most difficult part of incorporating sources is setting up the idea so that a reader knows where your thinking is starting--that comes in steps 1 and 3.   Once you’ve done that set up thoroughly, your interpretation of the source and your own ideas take center stage. The steps  sort of happen all at once: Obviously, you need to do some thinking about what the passage MEANS, before you can make decisions about what to quote.

1. What does a reader need to know before you can talk about the passage? (framing and context)

2. What does it mean? (explaining or digesting)

3. What do I really NEED to quote from this passage? (Editing, chopping, incorporating the words into a sentence of your own)

4. What is important about this quotation? (Extend the idea.  Use the idea.  Show how it fits with your argument. Blend.)

I’m going to focus here on parts 2 and 4:  What does the passage mean and what does it means for my argument. It is key to make very clear connections between your interpretation and argument and your source by re-quoting, or phrase quoting as you discuss.

What does it mean?

What Plato seems to be getting at is that it is possible to hear something, like a lecture perhaps, without truly learning anything from it. But he’s talking about the use of letters, so the superficial hearing in this case is really actually reading. We can, he says, read without understanding. It is interesting that he uses the terms hearing, which he would seem to value as it relates to speaking which he favors over writing.  This makes is clear that the real distinction he wants to make is between really knowing something and having only surface knowledge.

Notice how often I repeated the specific terms (and synonyms) from the quotation. Notice also that this is A LOT longer than the quotation itself. If you have chosen a significant quotation, it should take some time to explain it.

Now for the last step: What is important about this quotation?

This question continues to have validity in classrooms today. Teachers can give a lecture, but until the students use their knowledge, we have no idea whether the ideas have simply gone in one ear and out of the other--whether they hear much but learn little.  To strictly follow Plato, it seems that we would need to orally examine students, or ask students to demonstrate their knowledge in an oral presentation after they had heard a lecture or read some material for the course. But, oral examination fails to take into account the fact that students now--unlike the students of Plato’s time--have learned to learn in a culture of writing.

           

This is still a draft, but what you should see in this paragraph is that I spent almost half of the paragraph discussing and explaining Plato. It is also important to see that I stayed tightly focused on the key ideas of the source material even as I started to work out my own argument.

In the Phaedrus, Plato explains the invention of writing through a dialogue between Theuth, the inventor, and Thamus, the king who is skeptical of writing.  One aspect of this criticism is that people who use written letters “will be hearers of many things . . .[but they] will have learned nothing” (Jowett 1). What Plato seems to be getting at is that it is possible to hear something, like a lecture perhaps, without truly learning anything from it. But he’s talking about the use of letters, so the superficial hearing in this case is really actually reading. We can, he says, read without understanding. It is interesting that he uses the terms hearing, which he would seem to value as it relates to speaking which he favors over writing.  This makes is clear that the real distinction he wants to make is between really knowing something and having only surface knowledge.  This question continues to have validity in classrooms today. Teachers can give a lecture, but until the students use their knowledge, we have no idea whether the ideas have simply gone in one ear and out of the other--whether they hear much but learn little.  To strictly follow Plato, it seems that we would need to orally examine students, or ask students to demonstrate their knowledge in an oral presentation after they had heard a lecture or read some material for the course. But, oral examination fails to take into account the fact that students now--unlike the students of Plato’s time--have learned to learn in a culture of writing.