Bella Cohen’s Socratic questioning drilled literary comprehension into her children

Evidence

Even while the boys were at Ethical Culture and Dwight, Bella hired tutors to give them additional instruction. And she furnished still other instruction herself, assigning them books by Laurence Sterne and other of her favorite authors to read, and then holding long discussions with them—and with Edna when she was old enough—about the books’ meaning. Casually reading a passage, she would suddenly turn to one of the children and ask, “What’s that mean?” “And when she asked that,” Paul would recall more than half a century later, “you had better know.” Even while the children were playing, they were reminded of the importance of good English. If one of them mispronounced a word, down the stairs would come their mother’s voice saying, “What was that? What was that?” — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 152

Categorization

• XREF: This drill on precise meaning and language pairs with ‘Small acts of decorum toward corpses matter more than practical logic’ reading-ahead theme: the demand for exact recall foreshadows Moses’s obsessive exactitude in planning. — connects to: Socratic questioning can shatter religious complacency and force genuine self-examination — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 867; Langdell replaced textbook lectures with Socratic casebook teaching — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3518

Broader Connections

• Socratic questioning can shatter religious complacency and force genuine self-examination #expands (0.72) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 867
• Langdell replaced textbook lectures with Socratic casebook teaching #exemplifies (0.70) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3518