Teen Socrates Seminar – Winter 2022
The Aspen Institute offers its Teen Socrates Seminar each year to teens between the ages of 15-17 from the Roaring Fork Valley, Grand River Valley, and beyond. Students convene to take part in this transformational experience and come away with a new perspective on their lives, their futures, and society.
The three-day seminar is dedicated to enhancing leadership, problem solving, and critical thinking skills for high school students in a setting conducive to thought and fellowship. Students are challenged to think more critically and deeply about their values and ideas, and those that make the good society. Our proven method of text-based dialogue offers participants a neutral forum in which to reflect on timeless human values, pursue common ground, and cultivate a richer understanding of the human condition. Participants emerge from the seminar with a new perspective as they confront the difficult choices of our ever-changing world.
Each seminar convenes a dynamic group of students for lively, intensive roundtable discussions led by expert moderators Allyson Breyfogle and Jack Pannell. Classic and contemporary texts reflecting the breadth of human civilization form the starting points of a rich conversation in which the questions posed by the group are frequently as illuminating as the varied, timeless wisdom of the texts. Students read selections by such authors as Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Mary Oliver, and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others.
Schedule
Saturday, February 19
2:00-6:00 pm – Seminar Session
Sunday, February 20
2:00-6:00 pm – Seminar Session
Monday, February 21
9:00 am-12:00 pm – Seminar Session
The Teen Socrates Winter 2022 seminar is now at capacity. If you’d like to add your name to the waitlist, please contact Zoë Brown.
Note: The seminar will take place in person on the Institute’s Aspen Meadows campus. Participants will be asked to show vaccination status and a negative COVID test result before each session. The Aspen Institute will provide tests. Please contact Zoë Brown for questions and more information about this requirement. Participants traveling from outside of the Roaring Fork Valley to attend Teen Socrates must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.