Socratic method An educational
method attributed to the Greek philosopher Socrates by which the teacher encourages the student’s discovery of truth by asking leading and stimulating questions.
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particular examples of virtue are really manifestations of a more general and unifying universal idea of virtue. This rigorous dialogue approach, known as the Socratic method, is challenging for both teachers and students.33 Frequenting the agora, Athens’s central area, Socrates attracted young men who joined him in critically examining religious, political, and moral issues. As a social critic, Socrates made powerful enemies. Then as now, some people, especially those in positions of power, feared that critical thinking would challenge their authority and position. In 399 BCE, an Athenian jury found Socrates guilty of impiety to the gods and corrupting Athenian youth. He refused to flee to save himself and accepted his death sentence. Socrates stands out in educational history for his forthright defense of the academic freedom to think, question, and teach. He was also significant as the teacher of Plato, who later systematized many of Socrates’s ideas into a coherent philosophy.
3-5f Plato: Universal and Eternal Truths and Values
reminiscence The recalling or
remembering of ideas that Plato asserted were latently present in the mind. Through skilled questioning, the teacher stimulates students to bring these ideas to the conscious mind.
Plato’s Republic Plato’s most
systematic philosophical statement on politics and education. Using the format of dialogues, it portrays a perfect city ruled by philosopherkings according to the principle of justice.
Socrates’s pupil Plato (427–346 BCE) followed his mentor’s educational path. Plato founded the Academy, a philosophical school, in 387 BCE. He wrote philosophical dialogues about truth, virtue, and justice, as well as the Republic and the Laws, treatises on politics, law, and education.34 Plato’s philosophy, an early form of idealism, is discussed in Chapter 6, Philosophical Roots of Education. Rejecting the Sophists’ relativism, Plato argued that reality exists in an unchanging world of perfect ideas—universal concepts such as truth, goodness, justice, and beauty. What appears to our senses are but imperfect images of the universal and eternal concepts found in the Form of the Good. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” illustrated how we can find truth in the Form of the Good. Plato depicted prisoners in a dark cave who were chained so that they could see in only one direction. With a fire behind them, they saw only the shadows of objects that others carried before the flames. When a prisoner escapes, he climbs to the entrance of the cave. Ascending from the dark world of shadows, he sees the real world illuminated by the sun. When he reenters the cave to tell his fellow prisoners the good news, they scorn him in disbelief. In the Allegory, the sun represents the Form of the Good, the source of all that is bright, beautiful, good, and true. The difficult process of turning away from shadows to truth represents the Socratic method’s process of learning by self-examination and reflection. Plato’s theory of knowledge is called reminiscence, a process by which individuals recall the ideas present but hidden within their minds. Each human’s soul, before birth, existed in a spiritual world of pure ideas. At birth, these innate ideas are repressed within one’s subconscious mind. A person learns by rediscovering or recollecting these perfect ideas.35
Plato’s Ideal Society Plato’s Republic projected a plan for a perfect society ruled by an intellectual elite of philosopher-kings. Although Plato’s utopian state was never implemented, his ideas are worth studying as an idealized version of a certain kind of society and education.36
Erick Wilberding, Teach Like Socrates: Guiding Socratic Dialogues and Discussions in the Classroom (Waco, TX: Prufrock Press, 2014); and Matt Copeland, Socratic Circles: Fostering Critical and Creative Thinking in Middle and High School (Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers, 2005). 34 Robin Barrow, Plato and Education (New York: Routledge, 2014). 35 Gerald L. Gutek, Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education: A Biographical Introduction (Columbus, OH: Merrill/Prentice Hall, 2011), pp. 37–42. 36 William H. F, Altman, Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012); and Plato, Republic (London: Folio Society, 2003). 33
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