Response to Reading #6, Plato & Havelock

From the ‘ Republic’ by Plato, what made me most interesting is that the ‘allegory of cave’ gives me some insights of basics of ‘education’ itself.

The people were sitting in the cave, looking at only shadow and believing it’s real, but some of them started to pass through ‘rough, steep, and upward path’ (p.209) and realized there is real sun and came to know they were just watching the shadows before.

My first question is “ What made some people in the cave try to look and walk out of the cave?”
In my opinion, it seems that there is inborn curiosity or cognitive ability to try to think. And some of them definitely have more cognitive ability and most of them take it for granted about the current situation. These a few special people think that there might be something else outside of this world. And they try new world and they try to transmit what they’ve seen and known already.
So by the way of the ‘education’, most people are educated by using their own cognitive ability.
I think there are always some leaders who stand on the border line between the present and the future and they see them first and educate most of us.

Second question is about ‘the embarrassment of the person who experienced going out of the cave and coming back to the cave’. From page 211, Socrates says, “they may be confused in two ways.” Yes, definitely, physically getting used to the big difference between darkness and brightness must take time. But, what makes me agree more with Plato is the ‘mental confusion’. If a person gets out of the cave first, surely, he must be shocked of the fact the thing he thought as true was just a shadow. But it seems like very positive and more constructive confusing. It must be something good, like inner satisfaction. But of second confuse, if other people in the cave may laugh at him and don’t even try to think differently, he must be really frustrated.

I think, if I’m not wrong, I have a similar experience. When I finished my master degree of TESOL(Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language) and came back to Korea, I was really excited of ‘teaching differently’ (not only grammar, which was prevalent teaching content in Korea) and I wanted to teach ‘whole language’, using various advanced knowledge and methods. But when I had to face barriers from the people, (like my boss said, “No, that’s a just theory. It’s not appropriate to Korean condition.”), I felt really frustrated of the fact that most people take for granted of what they were used to and it takes TIME to apply new experience to the current situation.

Also, Socrates mentions of the attitude of the person who already knows the truth (p.212) and he says “education is not what some people boastfully declare it to be. They presumably say the can put knowledge into souls what lack it”. Isn’t it wonderful he already knew the proper attitude of the educators even since 500 B.C.?

Also, Socrates says, “depending on the way it is turned, the person who has wisdom could use it usefully and beneficially or uselessly and harmfully” (p212). If we think of the criminals from the news who is very clever and has a high IQ, though, he used his smart to the wrong way. I think two possible factors could work here, genetic and environmental factors. They may have received more violent genes from their parents or experienced more negative situations in the past. I think from his ‘allegory of the cave’, when they pass through ‘tough and narrow’ routes, some people think positively, but others may complain of the experience. Then, my question is here, “Isn’t there any more portions of education here? What can education change this kind of person?