Plato's View On Early Childhood Education

Plato is believed to have been born into a wealthy and influenced family in 428 BC in Athens. Plato while still a boy was familiar with Athenian politics and was expected to be a politician, but things turned around after his teacher Socrates was executed. He turned instead to philosophy with the idea of bringing true justice to mankind and also put an end to civil war. Plato set up the philosophy academy, a place for research and teaching for both theoretical and practical aspects. According to Plato, "just which type of desire rules individual soul depends on the relative strengths of his desires and the kind of education and socialization he receives". In this paper, I will be discussing Plato's view on early childhood education in his republic, how he educated or thinks children should be educated, where they should be educated and how, and the curriculum of their education versus the modern times education, to see if Plato's ideas or view on early childhood education has anything to do with, or has any

Plato remarks that anyone who will be good at anything must practice that thing from the (beginning) childhood onwards (Law, 643a) and should learn from childhood all the necessary and elementary skills needed because that will help him later in life. He used the teacher as an example that, the teacher when teaching should try to use miniature tools to represent or imitate the real things. He should try to use children's games to channel their pleasures and inclinations towards the activities in which they will have to engage when they are adults. (Law, 643 b-c). The general absence of these platonic virtue from our modern early childhood education goes a long way towards explaining the ills that increasingly beset our societies these days. Some examples of