He writes:

“I disliked as a student the Socratic method for the same reason why I disliked group work: My fellow students generally didn’t know anything about the subject in question. I wanted to hear from the person who had expertise in the area–the professor. (An assumption of Plato, of course, was that the subject being questioned already knew the answers to the questions being asked; it was just a question of getting them to see this. [This still doesn’t imply that ‘Socratic’ teaching would be the most effective way of teaching, though.] I venture the bold empirical claim that this is just false.) Anyway, as in your case, my best teachers didn’t teach Socratically. They did take questions and argue with students. But they lectured.

“When I arrived at my present school, I found that lecturing, especially to intro students, was nearly impossible. They had an attention span of 30 seconds or so. If I wasn’t constantly barraging them with questions, they would lose interest and stop paying attention. As a result, I’ve had to cut my syllabi by 50% or so; taking a bunch of answers that aren’t even in the ballpark takes a great deal of time. Do my students learn more by my teaching Socratically? I’m sure they do: Most of them have little or no intellectual curiosity, and won’t listen to lectures. (Part of the problem is the mindset that students are consumers, and the goal of a class is to entertain them. Unfortunately, this mindset has a hold on most of my students.) Would my students learn more if I could lecture to them and take questions for discussion? Most certainly!

“In my case, the Socratic method is useful, but it is because of the poor quality of most of the students. I shouldn’t have to use it, but I do.”