Plato believes that the view of knowledge embodied in the Allegory of the Cave h
ID: 3503882 • Letter: P
Question
Plato believes that the view of knowledge embodied in the Allegory of the Cave has profound and far-reaching implications for education: Education then is the art of doing this very thing, this turning around, the knowledge of how the soul can most easily and most effectively be turned around; it is not the art of putting the capacity of sight into the soul; the soul possesses that already but it is not turned the right way or looking where it should. This is what education has to deal with. Explain what you believe Plato means by these two contrasting ideas of education. Describe two examples from your own educational experience, one that involved turning your whole soul toward reality" and another in which you attempted to "put the capacity of sight into your soul."Explanation / Answer
The two ideas that have been talked about are more of the two most important steps to Education. ''Turning your whole soul toward reality'' refers to knowing and understanding the practical. It is important to know what exactly is needed to be learned and what the soul wants and needs to learn. It is the education that is beneficial with respect to reality and learning to realize it. We often turn back from a situation when we are afraid and we tend to keep avoiding such situations, but that situation represents reality and we should learn to educate ourselves to that in order to develop and keep growing.
For example, My such experience was with Stage Fright. I always felt that everyone out there looking at me will be judging my sillies mistakes and demeaning me. But it was important for me to go up there and speak. It was the need of the situation. It was the reality that I needed to embrace in order to move beyond it.
The other approach that has been mentioned by saying ''put the capacity of sight into your soul.'' is training ourselves to clearly see the positives and negatives of anything and strategize our actions for the benefit. it is rightly said that the soul already possesses this ability, it is just that we need to train it.
For example, following up on my previous situation, I now knew that it is important for me to learn to be fearless of speaking on stage, but ''how'' was the next question. I had to see and understand the situation - the kind of people I am addressing to, what may keep them interested, taking help of the lights projecting towards me so that I can hardly see the audience, teaching myself that no one actually is judging me or it doesn't matter even if they do, and understanding that what I am about to speak is more important than my stage fear.