[tmrggns]

I've been in a math class at the college level which operated exclusively by the Socratic method of questioning. Within an hour or two it became obvious that the appeal to the crowd didn't work so well, as some people will understand the concept faster than others. As a result, we went around to each student. However, this did result in sometimes trying to get an individual student to say the "correct" thing in order to follow to the next sequence of questions. People were put on the spot, which isn't necessarily bad. Also the class moved as slow as the slowest person and it took a whole lot of preparation by the professor. We had about 20 people, and at that scale it wasn't necessary to concentrate on each question, but only to the general topic. Even at that scale the method was breaking down, both from previous reasons as well as introducing a small amount of "stage fright". However, everyone left the class knowing what was taught, with a minimum of confusion along the way.