First Socratic Seminar

On Friday, we had a Socratic Seminar and it was my first ever Socratic Seminar.  I didn’t really know what to expect from it.  Would it be entertaining?  Fun?  Boring?  Awkward?  To tell you the truth I enjoyed it very much.  I enjoyed how people were expressing themselves including myself for a short bit.  It was quite entertaining and fun to me.  I liked how we the students controlled the seminar by bringing up a particular subject from the piece of paper/1984.  From the beginning all the way to the end, I feel that I listened very well & understood what we were discussing as a class.  One thing that we talked about was #24, “In a post 9-11 world, what is that acceptable balance between government control and individual freedom when an individual’s privacy issues are at play?”  Many people gave their input on the particular question; in fact, one person stated that there will never be an acceptable balance because many people have different opinions on things and no everyone will be satisfied, which I agreed very much.  As well, we talked about #25, “Should citizens be prepared to give up personal freedoms and privacy during a national crisis?”  As a class, we came to the conclusion that it all depends on the situation, and the decision is going to be decided when the time comes.  One thing that we talked about that I was very fascinated with was our discussions on our government.  Why does the government keep secrets from us?  If there are secrets, we don’t actually know that for a fact because we are not the government.  Should the government be allowed to hack into our webcams on our computers and wiretap our calls on our phones?  The comparisons between 1984 & us?  Are we going to become 1984 in the future?  Is this just the start of it?  All of these questions intrigued me in the Socratic seminar very much.  I didn’t know that there was a 9,000% increase on sales on Amazon because many people were seeing the similarities between us and the novel by George Orwell.  Plus, this book was written in 1949 so the technology in 1984 has not been invented yet, which in my opinion, is very great by George Orwell.  In the end, I enjoyed my first Socratic seminar and I would like to do many more in the future.