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Plato
Plato's works are extensive, wide-ranging and extraordinarily rich, and in many respects they set out the very terms in which philosophy understands itself. These works nearly always have a dialogical form, with Socrates (who wrote nothing) the main protagonist of the argument, and the scene is invariably one in which some kind of learning is taking place – a conversation usually involving friends in which, through a process of patient questioning by Socrates, a younger participant comes to see the truth for himself. This manner of teaching, not by direct instruction but by posing questions, has come to be known as ‘Socratic method', and in recent times it has been emulated in various ways, though sometimes trivialised in the process. Valuable as this may be, however, it is only a part of the conception of education that Plato imparts. In certain respects Plato's philosophy can seem highly fanciful to modern readers, not least in its metaphysical and cosmological aspects. For present purposes we shall not elaborate on this but instead concentrate on an episode in his book The Republic that serves to illustrate the richness of his educational vision. This is the allegory of the Cave.
Plato asks us to imagine that it is our ordinary condition that we are living in the depths of a cave. We are chained to the ground in such a way that we can only see its back wall. Light comes into the cave and casts shadows from the objects (the real things) that are at its mouth; what we see are not these real things but rather their shadows. The shadows flicker and shift in shape, they have no stability or permanence, but because we are unable to see anything else we take these images for reality itself. This then is our deluded, natural state; our education will involve our turning towards the truth. Because we are chained in position, however, and because it is painful for our weakened eyes to turn towards the brighter light towards the mouth of the cave, our natural inclination to keep our eyes on the shadows. It will take a good teacher, someone who has earlier escaped from this confinement, to come back down into the darkness and lead us gradually to turn our heads. We shall be bedazzled by the light, our eyes straining, but just as one's eyes gradually become accustomed to bright light, by turning towards the light we shall gradually be strengthened. In time we shall gain the strength to recognise the illusory nature of the shadows on the wall, and we shall break free from our chains. We shall then be able gradually to ascend towards the daylight at the mouth of the cave, where the real things are – those things we knew before only through their shadows. And beyond this we shall come to understand that those real objects of experience gain their light from and are revealed by the sun itself. The sun is the origin of truth. And for Plato the good and the true are one. If this is an allegory of our education, however, it is important to note that the story doesn't not end there, in this, as it were, once-and-for-all transformatory process, because it will be our role to go back down into the cave, to confront the world of shadows that is mistaken for real, and to mix with those who are so deluded. It is through our return to the world of shadows that others can be released. Our ascent and descent are continual.
The continuing power of this allegory relates in part to the way that we do, in so many respects today, indeed leave lives where we contemplate the distorted shadows of things on a screen rather than looking at things truly, and it captures something of the difficulty we have in facing up to the truth – that is, the difficulty of turning away from comforting, reiterated images that reinforce our acceptance of received ways of thinking and feeling. The process of education must be liberal (or liberating), then, not in the way it gives us the freedom to live our own lives as we choose but rather in its freeing us from illusion, in order to see things as they truly are. Plato holds that once we have contemplated the true and the good, these are what we shall be drawn towards, as if by an erotic power. From this there unfolds a whole politics, for it is claimed that the just society will be one in which those in power will be drawn to truth and goodness in this way, and hence from the desire for power that typically characterises and often corrupts leaders. And it is in such a society that there will be the kinds of conversations, the public space, through which such a continuing education can best occur. What else could one want?
For further reading: for a general guide to Plato's thought, see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/#PlaCenDoc .
For a survey of Plato's conception of ethics, which is particularly relevant to his conception of education, see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics/#HapDesForSelCom.
See Samuel Scolnicov's paper ‘Plato on Education as the Development of Reason'( http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Anci/AnciScol.htm ).
Other papers focusing on different aspects of education include Gene Fendt 's ‘Hippias Major, Version 1.0: Software for Post-Colonial, Multicultural Technology Systems' ( Journal of Philosophy of Education , 37.1, 89-99 ) , Eliyahu Rosenow's ‘Plato, Dewey, and the Problem of the Teacher's Authority' ( Journal of Philosophy of Education , 27. 2, 209-220) , David Rozema's ‘Plato's Theaetetus: what to do with an Honours Student' ( Journal of Philosophy of Education , 32.2, 207-223) and John Wilson's ‘ The Concept of Education Revisited' ( Journal of Philosophy of Education , 37.1, 101-108 ).
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