ABSTRACT
The purpose of education must always be twofold: to teach a variety of knowledge and to teach the skills necessary for applying that knowledge to new problems or situations. These twin goals are perhaps achieved most successfully through what is usually called the Socratic method of teaching. This chapter defines in precise terms what the Socratic method is and how in fact it accomplishes these goals. It examines a variety of dialogues involving the Socratic method and tried to formalize the tutoring strategy used in these dialogues as pattern-action rules or production rules, which take the form "If in situation X, do Y". The purpose of writing the rules as productions is to express the theory in a procedural formalism that is independent of the particular content. The chapter specifies the reasoning skills that each particular production rule is designed to elicit.
