Sophie’s World: a masterclass in teaching dry concepts

I had heard the title Sophie’s World a few times before. When a close friend recommended it to me a few weeks ago, I decided to give it a try.

I fell in love with this book and read it in a week. I was amazed at how the author could take a seemingly dry topic, the history of philosophy, and make it into a real page turner. As a lecturer in Computer Science, teaching seemingly dry topics is something I take very seriously.

Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder has changed my understanding of writing and teaching.

As I am sure you have noticed, good writing, good presentations and good teachers are rare. It is just so easy to write boring content.

This article will walk through what I took away from Sophie’s World to improve my writing, teaching and communication in general. Whoever you are and whatever you do, I hope it will enable you to make any topic interesting.

Teaching through a story

In Sophie’s World, a full course on the history of philosophy is embedded into a narrative. The main character, Sophie, is waiting for her dad to return from Lebanon, and starts receiving letters on the history of philosophy from a mysterious Alberto Knox.

His letters start to be delivered in more and more intriguing ways: by post, by a dog, left somewhere in the garden, etc…

Without spoiling any part of the book, the story is full of both philosophical nuggets and plot twists. A gripping read.

I have studied philosophy and the history of philosophy before; but I rarely felt as engaged with a book on the topic. This is something that I wish my students would say about my courses, or that readers would say about my articles.

Teaching through dialogue

One of the key components of this story are the discussions between Sophie and Alberto. Sophie finally gets to meet Alberto, her mysterious mentor. Together, they talk through difficult concepts and the lives of the most famous philosophers.

Throughout the lessons, not unlike Socratic dialogues, Sophie asks questions to clarify anything that would not be clear to a fifteen-year-old girl in Norway in the 1990s. This gives Alberto, and the author, the opportunity to rephrase them, or give more examples.

This reminded me of my classes. We all know that making lectures interactive is a great way to keep students engaged. Something else that I learnt through this book is that interactions and dialogue can also improve the content of the lecture. Through questions, lecturers get a chance to spend more time on concepts students find difficult.

On this topic, a great tip that I would have liked to hear when I started teaching: When in trouble, ask questions to the audience

As a beginning lecturer, my initial instinct was to talk more, and quicker. Not something that I would recommend.

Start talking and interacting. This is a great way to re-engage with students, reduce tension in the room and clarify difficult points.

Making a topic relevant to your audience

One cannot have a conversation on their own. To have a dialogue with students, or readers, it is critical to keep them engaged and make whatever you want to talk about relevant.

The History of Philosophy is generally not a topic that gets people excited. And yet, it is the story about how humans make sense of the reality around them, of their lived experience. It is the story of making sense of who we are, and the world in which we live. Described like this, the topic seems much more exciting, at least to me. Sophie’s World is ruthlessly focused not on the chronological history of thinkers, but on the all too human desire to understand who we are.

I had a similar experience with my students. I recently realised that whatever you say in lectures, it does not matter unless you make it interesting. Sure, you can always say that it is on the exam, so that students have to pay attention to get a good grade. But this is a cheap trick.

My favourite way to do so is to link what I teach to the world around us. If we are studying graph search algorithms like A*, I will build the session around Google Maps’s itinerary algorithm.

Something else that I like to do is, at the beginning of each semester, to ask each student to introduce themselves, and share what they want to take away from this course or their degree; what their long-term goal is. I take notes. After the first class, I make sure to link each goal to some of the topics on the syllabus. When introducing a new topic, I generally mention how this topic is key to reaching one of the students’ objectives.

As an example, when teaching Object-Oriented Programming Algorithms and Data Structures, I would link this to one of the students’ desire to become a game designer; showing that this is a key component of world building.

Using your audience’s words

That’s it, your audience is engaged, now the best way to keep them engaged is to avoid jargon and technical vocabulary like the plague.

Philosophy is a science that is (generally) practised with natural language. Unlike Maths or Code, which have their own formal language, philosophers have historically relied on the language we use to communicate; the one I use to write this article.

Formal and Natural Language

Natural language is the language spoken or written by humans for everyday communication, such as English, French, or Mandarin. This language is often ambiguous and context-dependent. As an example, the sentence “I saw her duck” can mean either:

• I saw a women duck, i.e. lower her body suddenly
• I saw the duck owned by a woman

This poses relatively few issues in everyday life, but can be problematic in sciences.

Formal language is a system of communication with strict rules and structure, often used in mathematics, logic, and computer science. Formal langugage are unambiguous and context-independent.

Examples of formal language include mathematical notation or programming languages.

• \(2 + 2 = 4\) is not open to human interpretation
• print("Hello World") will (hopefully) produce the same output on any computer with the same Python version

To get through complex reasoning, philosophers generally develop their own concepts and build on these concepts. This can make some texts opaque, difficult to read when one is not familiar with a philosopher’s work.

Examples of philosophical jargon: - Kant: categorical imperative - Sartre: en-soi (in-itself), pour-soi (for-itself) - Hegel: Aufhebung, Phenomenology of Spirit

It takes effort to bring all of these thinkers into the common denominator of English. To make all of these thinkers accessible, without assuming any prior knowledge. There is beauty in making complex ideas simple. In Sophie’s World, Gaarder brilliantly explains the works of history’s most famous philosophers with the words of a fifteen-year-old girl. Unlike Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit or Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, this is a book that can be read and understood by anyone who speaks English.

No one cares about a list

The irony of this header at the end of a list is not lost on me

History is too frequently taught as a list of facts and dates. History of Philosophy is too frequently taught as a list of authors and ideas. The issue is, no one cares about a list. You (and I) will probably have forgotten all of this list next week.

It is much easier to remember stories. As Nat Eliason cleverly puts it in this post: you would probably manage to name 3 spells in Harry Potter (if not, don’t worry).

The only reason you can name these spells is that you learnt them through the story of a sorcerer apprentice. You have not learnt these by reading a blog post called “Top 10 Harry Potter spells”.

If you want to remember this article, just remember one central rule of communication. Whatever you do or say, only keep one idea in mind: your audience. Know your audience, craft your message, deliver your message, and make sure they got it through dialogue and interactions.

And much more

There are many more aspects that make the novel so entertaining and memorable. It is a typical coming of age, ending with the main character’s fifteenth birthday. This book also brings elements of suspense, fantasy, and takes some creative freedom with the laws of physics that constrain our reality.

Final Thoughts

There is so much I learnt from Sophie’s World. In the end, what I took from it can be summarised as follows:

• Think about your audience. What they care about, the words they use and understand, what they know, etc…
• Forget everything you know about a topic, especially jargon.
• With fresh eyes, make the topic you are sharing relevant to your audience. Does it solve one of their problems? Is it embedded in devices they use every day? Can it alleviate some of their existential dread? Can it expand their perspectives? Can it change the way in which they view the world?
• Make this into a single story: tie all parts together, identify the foundations, and describe the concepts that build on top. Use examples to illustrate theoretical ideas.
• Finally, engage with the audience throughout. With dialogues, your audience remains engaged. With their questions, you get the opportunity to dwell on difficult concepts.

As my public speaking teacher at university would say: deliver your message TO the audience, and make sure THEY got it.

If you liked this article, I would strongly recommend you read Sophie’s World if you have not done so already.