Democracy and Education · Chapter
III: The Platonic Educational Philosophy explained
This chapter examines Plato's educational philosophy, highlighting his recognition that education should discover and train individual aptitudes for social use.
What happens
This chapter examines Plato's educational philosophy, highlighting his recognition that education should discover and train individual aptitudes for social use. However, Plato's view was limited by his static, class-based conception of society and individuality, lacking appreciation for the infinite diversity of human capacities. His ideal state, once established, would resist change, contradicting the democratic and progressive ideals of education.
Themes in this chapter
Social Function of Education
Plato emphasized that education's role is to discover individual aptitudes and train them for social use, contributing to a stable and just society.
Division of Labor and Leisure
Plato's scheme assigns individuals to three classes (laborers, guardians, legislators) based on natural capacities, reflecting a rigid division of labor.
Critique of Traditional Curriculum
The chapter critiques Plato's static, class-based curriculum and his failure to recognize the infinite diversity of individual capacities.
Characters to notice
- Plato
Plato's educational philosophy is the central focus; he is credited with first consciously teaching that education should discover and train natural aptitudes for social use, though his views were limited by a static, class-based conception of individuality.
Key passages
“No one could better express than did he the fact that a society is stably organized when each individual is doing that for which he has aptitude by nature in such a way as to be useful to others (or to contribute to the whole to which he belongs); and that it is the business of education to discover these aptitudes and progressively to train them for social use.”
Plato perfectly articulated that a stable society requires each person to do what they are naturally good at, benefiting others, and that education's job is to find and develop these talents for social purposes.
This captures Plato's core insight about the social function of education.
“While he affirmed with emphasis that the place of the individual in society should not be determined by birth or wealth or any conventional status, but by his own nature as discovered in the process of education, he had no perception of the uniqueness of individuals.”
Although Plato insisted that social position should be based on individual nature revealed through education, not on birth or wealth, he failed to recognize that each person is truly unique.
Highlights the limitation in Plato's philosophy despite his progressive stance.