My daughter is a sophomore at a public HS in OH. They have been utilizing the socratic circle/seminar as part of their class work. It's a pretty cool idea to utilize in school IMHO. I don't recall ever doing anything like this in HS or middle school. She kicked butt and was inside the circle for almost the entire duration for the last one they did. More info here.

http://www.readwritethink.org/profession...30600.html

IDK, I know it's common to rail against how bad our education system sucks. However, our local HS has myriad of opportunities that I never had access to when I went thru HS. There are STEM opportunities everywhere, including more science electives available, engineering classes (even a semester of CAD) and more math electives that I had access to when I went thru school. Where I grew up, our school was large and had resources. The kids can even dual enroll at the local colleges and take college level courses in math, science, humanities and social sciences. It's so much better regarding opportunities of study. I think this is going on at a lot of other places too.

I beez a expurt in ebonics.

My HS did this all the time. This is the first I've heard of this technique not being new/universal.