The student of philosophy must possess the virtues of courage, magnificence, apprehension and memory as his natural gifts and that without proper education, these very qualities may result in men who are regarded as utterly useless or depraved.
The educators' responsibilities increase with the most gifted minds as when they are ill-educated, they have greatest capacity for the greatest crimes and true evil. Conversely, Socrates and his cronies appear to believe that only a very few individuals are capable of understanding philosophy and that lesser minds have no need to learn philosophy as they are not as capable of accomplishment of good or evil.
In my opinion, the statement which has withstood the test of time appears in Book IV wherein Socrates clearly states, "that the direction in which education starts a man, will determine his future life."
It further describes the virtue of education as not great, but sufficient to the purpose of creating a superior State that started well, gathers momentum by quality education imparting strong constitutions and that these good constitutions nurtured in a good education continually improve man just as animal husbandry consciously improves the bloodlines of other animals. The responsibility laid upon teachers is tremendous already, with the students' very future determined by the quality of their education.
However, the concept that students' education will actually improve the bloodlines of man is harder to prove and certainly more controversial.
This ideal State will have the responsibility of determining for which field a student is best suited at a very young age.
It is encouraged that through children's natural play their talents and proclivities will be discovered, but the future teachers' role in making these determinations is not fully explained. Book V describes the youth with a love of learning and knowledge that is never satisfied as a philosopher and one that dislikes learning as lacking the power of judging what is good and bad. A great deal of time is spent discussing the ideal that individuals should specialize in one area and never branch outside their area of expertise once they have achieved expertise in that one area....
To wit, in Socrates' day, there were no official government prosecutors (commonly referred to in modern America as "District Attorneys"); in effect, any citizen could bring an indictment against any other citizen, and call for a trial. And that's basically what happened to Socrates. Here in America, in 2006, notwithstanding what Vice President Cheney said, President George W. Bush stated, "I will never question the patriotism of somebody who disagrees
" With his bold and sweeping statements about a divine mission to seek out and expose false wisdom, and his assertions that nothing short of death will stop him from completing that mission, Socrates makes it clear that, to him, the vocation of a philosopher is a dangerous one. He demonstrates an awareness that his practices have not only brought him enemies, but will likely lead to his death. However, Socrates
The book discusses the prevalent impression of oneself as a separate ego covered in a bag of skin that is similar to a hallucination that accords neither with experimental philosophy nor with the religions of the east, more specifically Hinduism. This hallucination undermines the use of technology and of formal education in general, because of its involvement in the destruction of humanity. Watts favors the kind of education that
However, many times, viewing an object in relation to other objects does indeed transcend the permanence of the meaning and create new meaning. Therefore, our knowledge of what we are convinced is real can change, which highlights the question of whether or not our original knowledge was real before it changed; or if knowledge can ever be real. Socrates posed these questions initially, pondering the ability to agree that
Socrates is one of the most renowned philosophers of all times. His dialectic method is used in a number of ways and has vital importance in literature and deliberation. In the contemporary era, Socratic or Dialectic Method is the term that is used to point out a conversation between two or more people who might have opposing views about an issue but they come to a conclusion after trying to
Students are complex creatures, volatile, complicated and paradoxical. No two students learn alike, and no two students are the product of the same biological and cognitive processing mechanisms. In modern society, educators have taken the standpoint that students should be taught utilizing one method, a verbal learning approach. In the traditional sense, this warrants one teacher standing in front of a large classroom of students, lecturing about a particular subject
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