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The Importance Of Education In Plato's Republic

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In book 7 of Plato's Republic the protagonist Socrates provides readers with two variations of Education. For simplification , we shall call these educations “the education of shadows” and “education of dialect”. At 518 c socrates provides us with a definition of the education of shadows: “putting knowledge into souls that lack it”. Back in the allegory of the cave, we see the effect this education has on the human soul. It is described as “ the truth is nothing other than the shadows of artifacts” 515 c. What plato is trying to get readers to understand is that an education of shadows provides the bare minimum. This means that the educators are satisfied as long as there students function at the same capacity of big brained parrot. Just the same as the prisoners in the …show more content…

To start, the education of shadows is focused teaching the individual to proforme one social function. In the modern educational system, students are often taught the tricks of the triad. For engineering students such as myself an education of shadows consists of formulas and natural laws. In opposition, an education of dialect wants future engineers to dig deeper. Instead of recognizing that objects fall, dialectic education wants us to ask what is it that makes objects fall. Socrates hents at this concept at 529 c-d, “We should consider the decorations in the sky to be the most beautiful and most exact of visible things, seeing that there embroidered on a visible surface. But we should consider their motions to fall far short form the true ones--motions that are really fast or slow as measured in true numbers, that trace out true geometrical figures that are all in relation to one another…” To paraphrase, being taught by the shadows will teach you that stars are beautiful, but an education of dialect will make you ask, what is it that makes them beautiful, and why do they

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