The Myth Of The Cave Purpose Of Education

Patrick Awuah, the founder of Ashesi University, explains that the purpose of a liberal arts college is to educate free men and woman to become leaders. Ashei was the first non-profit liberal arts college in West Africa. Patrick saw the need for a liberal arts education because he felt that the current leaders of Africa did not have the creative thinking skills necessary to fix the problems threatening Africa. He believed that a liberal arts education teaches students how to confront complex problems and create new and important ideas. The key trait of a liberal arts education is that it teaches students how to think creatively and allows them space to develop their own thinking skills, it creates a good balance between societal and scientific knowledge. -new sentence/rephrase

In Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave and Freire’s The“Banking” Concept of Education, the idea of education and restrictions is discussed and pondered on. In The Allegory of the Cave, Plato tells us his ideas and beliefs through a story that involves three prisoners who are chained up in a cave. Their backs are towards the entrance, and they are only exposed to shadows and echoes. When one of the prisoners is released he enters a world filled with confusion and disbelief. In Freire’s The “Banking” Concept of Education, he addresses his notions of today’s education system by setting the scene of students in a classroom who are only given a teacher and the teacher’s knowledge. Although Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave shows that people are restricted in knowing the truth because they are chained up and Freire thinks that students can release themselves from their restrictions by questioning the higher power , I claim that both Plato and Freire make similar arguments because both claim that the reason to why we are restricted is because our perception of truth comes from only one source that is given to us.

In the Allegory of the Cave there are chained prisoners in cave who can only stare at the cave wall in front of them. At the back there is a long entrance with a staircase the width of the cave and a fire burning in the distance. They see only shadows projected in front of them from a raised platform and hear an echo that they attribute to what they observe. They talk about and name the shadows of objects they see before them. To them the truth are the shadows. Then one day one of the prisoners is released. He is told that what he saw before was an illusion. Once he is outside it takes a while for his eyes to adjust to the sun. First he observed the shadows of thing then their reflection and finally the actual object. Remembering his previous state he goes back to the cave and tries to explain that everything is an illusion but they laugh at him and think he’s crazy. They believe it best not to ascend and they choose to remain as they are. The cave represented opinion. The shadows that are cast on to the wall represented physical objects. The prisoners represented the common people (Welles).

When Plato described his “Allegory of the Cave”, he compared reality, education and understanding in two separate ways. The first is its form within the cave, and the second is exploring it and its change outside of the cave. Within the cave people are manipulated into thinking a certain way and all share the same opinions; their education is broad and limited with only the use of shadows and sound. Connecting it to Baldwin’s “A Talk to Teachers”, he portrayed similar ideas but used children of different races as an example rather than a cave. Baldwin considered white children to be stuck in this cave, they’re oblivious to the problems around them and are taught only the good things in life.

“Choosing a Map for Life,” by M. Scott Peck, “The Allegory of the Cave,” by Plato, “The Truman Show” and “Salvation” by Langston Hughes describe the views and perspective of the reality in our world. We have to get out, discover the world around and revise it. By setting up a map or goal and revising it in the world, will make us to control our perceptions and draw close to the reality.

I had an experience that each represents the symbol towards the Allegory of the Cave. My childhood was mostly in Jamaica where I lived with my father for two to three years. I can relate to the symbols from the "Allegory of the Cave".

The "Allegory of the Cave" is Plato's attempt to explain the relationship between knowledge and ignorance. Starting with the image of men in fetters that limit their movement and force them to look only ahead, this is the idea that all men and women are bound by the limits of their ignorance. Men and women are restricted by the limits of the education of their parents and the small amounts that can be culled from their environment. Images and shadows are representations of those things surrounding us that we see but do not understand because of our limited knowledge. As we obtain the ability to see things more clearly in the cave that is our ignorance, we start to then

Plato used imagery to elaborate the forms of theory. One of the allegories he used to explain forms of theory is that of a cave. He introduced the allegory of the cave saying that there are three prisoners tied to some rocks, with their arms and legs bound and their heads tied up so that they can only look at the raised stone wall which separates them with the other world, they see shadows of people on the other side of the wall but they assume them to be an illusion, they have been there since birth and never seen the outside of the cave (Plato, 2011). The cave is a symbolic form of the modern-day world, which is full of obliviousness while the chained prisoners represent the people in that world whose perspective concerning life is shallow and ill-informed. The raised stonewall is the demarcation between the world full of ignorance and false perceptions and the people who love knowledge and responsive to change.

4. In the Allegory of Human Cave, Plato describes human world as a cave, in which, our perception of “truth” is nothing but a shadow coming from the “sun”. Each of us has been chained so that we’re not able to look at the source behind our back. In my interpretation, Plato implies that the world in which human perceive is like a cave, we might be chained and unable to look beyond the “shadow”. Thus, what we see in the “reality” might not be the reality, but its shadow. Also, Plato describes that the one who broke the chained and explored outside of the cave, once comes back would receive the denial from others. This person, in my opinion, represents the role of philosophers, which is the one who always seeks for the reality or the “sun”. The philosophers are the peers who realizes that the world we perceive is just a shadow, and not that many people are able to realize that. Then, some would ask why we know whether if the world is a shadow. Yes, we don’t. We also don’t know whether if the world is not a shadow. In another word, there isn’t “absolute truth” about the existence of the “reality” we’re living in. Therefore, we need to keep seeking for the “reality” no matter whether it is what it seems to be or not. Then, how can we break the chain that ties us to the “shadow” of reality? One of the answers is to keep questioning. As mentioned above, there is no absolute truth. One could be right today and will be wrong tomorrow, vice versa. By questioning, we’re able to explore

Knowledge is awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. Whereas ignorance is lack of knowledge or information. According to Plato in the story “The Allegory of the Cave” ignorance is much more common than knowledge itself. People are too comfortable in their ignorance that when they are introduced to knowledge they discard it. He believes that the “truth would literally [be] nothing but the shadows of the images.”(3). Shadows are the ignorance of the world. How they only believe what is right in front of them never questioning or wanting more. If the a prisoner in the cave were introduced to “suddenly stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains”(3). The pains would

Plato’s Republic as a whole is founded on the idea that there an objective immutable reality and truth, which he calls ‘the good’ (506d), and the soul can realize this principle through proper education. These theories are established most prominently in the allegory of the cave, which both draws upon and unifies the analogies of the sun and the divided line.

According to The Allegory of the Cave, the process of education should be approached in an individualized manner. As seen in the reading it is hard to get people to break away from their social "norms". In order for the process of education to be successful each approach needs to be individualized in order for students to reach out of their comfort zones. This was shown in The Allegory of the Cave when the individual left the cave but the had a difficult time convincing others do to the same. The approached used for the freed prisoner did not necessarily work on the others, and a different approached needed to be used in order to gain understanding from the others. This is often used in education by differentiation in students in order to gain

The Allegory of the Cave or also known as, Myth of the Cave, is a good example of explaining the feature of the way people think. It is a concept that demonstrates how humans are fearful of change and what they don’t know. Plato says that men are living in an underground cave and it is a situation. The Allegory of the Cave is Plato's explanation of the education of the soul toward enlightenment. Plato talks about being free, everyday life, knowledge, and essentially what he wrote to be true. I think that he was very unique with his writings because there are so many ways to look at the world and his way was just one. He was educated highly and is recognized as a philosopher to this day.

My opinions on Allegory of The Cave by Plato were, mostly, solidified by outside research. Originally, I interpreted the story as a metaphor of truth, opinion, and perspective. Although, I thought that the meaning was to explain that perspective defines truth. While through the research, Plato had a theory concerning human perception; Knowledge is just opinion and to truly understand it must be discovered through philosophical reasoning (“Philosophyzer”). While this partially solidified my thoughts on perspective, it also created an idea that people, or the prisoners, should constantly question and be skeptical to find the true answers. Plato’s theory on forms, that everything is just an imitation of reality which we will never see, also helped

To the best of my knowledge, the humanities are various areas of studies that focus on the human culture as a whole. These areas could focus on philosophy/ theology, literature, culture, or various areas of history. Depending on the particular area of focus within the subject, the definition of humanities can be either rather broad or quite specific.