Plato, one of the greatest thinkers in history, describes in his ,the laws, how he sees education. Everything is focused on the child’s spiritual development, ultimately to protect ,the State,. To succinctly present Plato’s educational philosophy, it is necessary to quote here and there from ,the Laws,, especially when it comes to the role of ,the State,. The language may seem archaic, but that shouldn’t spoil the fun.
Life and philosophical development.
Plato was born in 428 B.C. born in Athens. His father Ariston and his mother Periktione both belonged to the highest families of Athens: Plato’s real name was that of his grandfather, Aristokles; His gymnastics master gave him the name Plato, the broad, because of his large stature. He is also said to have achieved considerable feats in sports, including an athletic victory at the artistic games. However, his essential talent lay in another area. He wrote tragedies and other poetry at an early age. He also found him to be a passionate practitioner of the sciences, especially mathematics. When Plato, at the age of about twenty, comes into contact with the enigmatic but exceptionally fascinating figure of Socrates, he knows that philosophy, in the sense of striving for the deepest and most essential in man, is what truly makes man human. becomes his ideal. When Socrates was sentenced to the poison cup in Athens, Plato deliberately turned his back on his hometown and, with other philosophical friends, found refuge with Euclides in Megara. From there he undertook great journeys, apparently following his great ancestor Solon, to acquire wisdom; there is talk of a stay in Egypt and of a stop in Kyrènè, where he is said to have met the great mathematician Theodoros. In southern Italy, he underwent a profound and decisive influence for his philosophy from the Pythagoreans who learned there. He visited Sicily and there befriended Dioon, cousin of the famous Dionysios of Syracuse. He soon came into conflict with this and even tried to kill him and eventually had him sold as a slave on the market of Aegina. Plato was ransomed by Annikeris, a friend from Kyrènè, and finally returned to Athens, where he founded the famous School, the Akadèmeia [388BC]. Plato made two more trips to Sicily [366 and 36i BC] and Plato continued his pedagogical and scientific work until his death (348/347 BC) . Scribens mortuus est, still writing he died, says Cicero.
Wry premise
It is difficult to appreciate Plato as an educator if one has not tried to penetrate to the core of his philosophy. After all, his educational system is purely and exclusively aimed at the philosophical development and perfection of the student or follower. For Plato, philosophy is an all-consuming pursuit. It must be clear that for Plato education does not consist in imparting knowledge, nor in learning science, but neither in simply shaping society (the state). Education has as its sole and exclusive object the areté, a concept that is usually rendered as virtue and which indeed has this meaning, provided that one sees virtue as an inner excellence that cannot be satisfied with anything other than what is truly noble and truly beautiful. The attainment of virtue is therefore the main goal or aim of education.
The problem of education
The problem of education occupied Plato from an early age. In the Protagoras the question is asked whether virtue can be learned. Socrates, points out how the sons of Pericles, who himself could boast of exceptional aretè (almost genius talent), became miserable failures, despite the most careful education. Protagoras argues against this that in fact our entire social life is based on the belief in the ability to be educated to virtue. From early childhood, the child is taught the rules of proper conduct and higher education in music and literature would also be meaningless if it were not based on the axiom of learnability.
For Plato, education is essentially society-oriented. Not only that it is self-evident to the ancient Hellene that society is the higher unity in which and for which only the individual can exist; but also every virtue is worthless that has not been tested and established in human intercourse. Society (the State) must be protected. According to Plato, this is only possible when the best are in charge; However, an indispensable condition is also that the citizen is systematically educated for his role in society. Two main forms of training are therefore emerging, firstly a general one, in which all citizens must participate; secondly, that which is intended for the best. The selection and selection of this last group is not based on rank or origin, but solely on talent. It is clear that this selection can only be made by persons who have achieved the highest degree of insight, both into their own human being and into that of society, and it is therefore not surprising that, according to Plato, these can only be those who have risen to the highest level of science.
The education system in the ‘Laws’
In his last major work, the Laws, Plato again gives a major place to education. The core of education lies in the right education, which already prepares the child in his play for that in which he, when he has become a man, must have full competence. The child’s first sensations are pleasure and pain; in this guise the first stirrings of virtue and vice occur. By education Plato means the first acquisition of wisdom by the child. The child should be attracted to the beautiful and repel the ugly. Plato starts with the movements because they are uncoordinated in the child. According to Plato, young people are unable to control their body and voice and they tend to dance and jump constantly and uncontrollably, emitting all conceivable sounds. Plato’s conclusion leaves nothing to be unclear : ,Uneducated is therefore the same as being incapable of participating in the festive choral singing and dancing”
Birth and first growth
Too rapid growth, without being accompanied by appropriate efforts, poses great dangers. This period therefore requires the greatest care. Plato even goes so far that he wants to start raising the child with the pregnant woman and prescribes gymnastics and exercise to them. He relies on the example of breeders of fighting cocks and other livestock animals who keep their animals under their arms. The smallest even in the hand, and in this way they walk long distances, not so much for their own body as for that of the animals. In this way they prove that, for those who understand, all bodies benefit from it. After all, animals are not exposed to all kinds of shocks and movements, which allows them to eat better and acquire health, beauty and strength. Plato therefore wants to lay down the law that a woman walks a lot during her pregnancy, that she keeps her child swaddled until the age of two, to let it take its shape, but then the mother must be punished if she takes the child everywhere, outside, to the temple. They must therefore wear it until the age of three. Plato is not afraid of being laughed at when he lays down this law, after all, he writes in the Laws. The right-thinking will realize that, if family life is not well-ordered, even the best laws do not benefit the State.
Against fear
A second point in raising the child is combating fear. This is a kind of disease of the soul, which is combated and calmed precisely by the externally applied movement. Mothers use anti-anxiety measures when they rock or soothe their child to sleep in their arms. In this way, singers also contribute to creating inner peace. Everyone must remember that habituating the young to feelings of fear means that one will quickly fall prey to panic later on; this would therefore mean a school for cowardice.
Moderate severity
An upbringing that is too weak makes children moody, quick-tempered and easily unbalanced; if it is too harsh and rude, it makes them slaves, base, unfree and misanthropes, in short, unsuitable for society. One should therefore not protect the child from all sorrow, fears and pain and satisfy his desires at all costs: Plato writes “the right mean should be observed, which we characterize as cheerful, an inner state that we recognize on the authority of to attribute an honorable tradition to the deity”
The game
The child from three to six years old, boy and girl, needs play. In doing so, one must avoid all vulgarity and, if necessary, chastise the child . But Plato had already warned with regard to slaves that one should never punish brutally and violently. ‘Since the being ‘human’ is a difficult creature, we must be very careful how we behave towards them. If one desires to have tractable slaves, one must train them properly, not only in their interest, but also in our own interest. The training consists in not treating them with brute force or mistreating them, and even less so than our peers. He who truly and unfeignedly loves justice will do the least injustice to those whom he can do wrong with impunity.’ The same applies even more to the education of children: neither roughness, which provokes anger, nor slackness, which loosens .
Education is a matter for the State
Plato says that upbringing and education is a matter for the State and should not be left to private arbitrariness, as a result of which entire sections of the population would be deprived of proper education and the harmony of the state system would suffer. After giving standards that the authorities responsible for the various parts of education must meet, he says: ‘ Only one government person remains, the supreme leader of the entire education of girls and boys. This leadership must be in one hand, by a man who must be at least fifty years old, father of legitimate children, preferably sons and daughters, but otherwise one of the two. Both the elected and the voter must realize that this task is by far the most important of all the administrative functions of the State. Because for all life it applies that the good flourishing of the first shoot is decisive for the successful completion of the entire growth. Granted that man is by nature one of the tame creatures and, with proper education, becomes the most divine and mildest of all beings, but in the absence of sufficient and well-guided education, he is the wildest creature that the earth has produced. Given this fact, the question of education is not such an incidental matter of secondary importance for the legislator. Since, therefore, in the first place, the supreme inspector must be properly chosen, we must direct them to appoint as supreme guardian the one who is the most excellent in all respects in the State, according to their utmost ability.’
Education not a matter of ‘learning’
Because of its exceptional importance for a good insight into Platonic education, I quote the following text from the State: ‘Education is not at all what some people think it is. They claim to be able, when there is no science yet in the soul, to bring it into it, as if they were able to restore light to blind eyes. Our argument now shows that every soul already has within itself the capacity for everything and that it possesses an organ with which it understands everything. Now as one cannot turn an eye from darkness to light without turning the whole body, so this organ must, together with the whole soul, be turned away from the perishable until it is capable of the direct vision of the Good. Well, education is the art in question, that of reversal, and its task is to find out how this reversal will be accomplished most easily and most effectively; its task is by no means to endow the organ with sight: on the contrary, since it already possesses this, but is poorly directed and does not see according to what it is intended for, it must correct this error.’