socrates contribution to education essay

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SOCRATES ON EDUCATION

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Alfred S I M I Y U Khisa

Anthony Long

Anne-Marie Schultz

In this paper, I explore three autobiographical narratives that Plato’s Socrates tells: his report of his conversations with Diotima (Symposium 201d–212b), his account of his testing of the Delphic oracle (Apology 21a–23a), and his description of his turn fromnaturalistic philosophy to his own method of inquiry (Phaedo 96a–100b).1 This Platonic Socrates shows his auditors how to philosophize for the future through a narrative recollection of his own past. In these stories, Plato presents us with an image of a Socrates who prepares others to do philosophy without him. In doing so, Plato’s Socrates exhibits philosophical care for his students. In the first part of the paper, I briefly discuss Socrates’ overall narrative style as Plato depicts it in the five dialogues that Socrates narrates. I then analyze each of these autobiographical accounts with an eye toward uncovering what they reveal about Plato’s presentation of Socrates’ philosophical practice.2 Finally, I offer a brief description of what it might mean to practice philosophy as care for self and care for others in a Socratic fashion.

Sara Ahbel-Rappe

Matus Porubjak

This philosophical essay aims to return to the Socratic problem, ask it anew, and make an attempt to find its possible solution. In the introduction, the author briefly discusses to genesis of the Socratic problem and the basic methodological problems we encounter when dealing with it. Further on, it defines five basic sources of information about Socrates on which the interpretation tradition is based. Then the author outlines two key features of Socrates’ personality, aligned with the vast majority of sources: (1) Socrates’ belief that he has no theoretical knowledge; (2) Socrates’ predilection towards practical questions, and the practical dimension of his activity. In conclusion, the author expresses his belief that it is just this practical dimension of philosophy that has been in the ‘blind spot’ of the modern study of Socrates which paid too much attention to the search for his doctrine. The history of philosophy, however, does not only have to be the history of doctrines, but can also be the history of reflected life practices which inspire followers in their own practices while reflecting on them. The author therefore proposes to understand the historical Socrates as the paradigmatic figure of practical philosophy.

Dimitri El Murr

Philosophy in Review

Patrick Mooney

Peter J Ahrensdorf

Quantity: 1 Order Available as a Google eBook for other eReaders and tablet devices. Click icon below... Summary Shows that the dialogue in Plato's Phaedo is primarily devoted to presenting Socrates' final defense of the philosophical life against the theoretical and political challenge of religion. "That the psychology of its characters is a key to understanding the argument of a Platonic dialogue is a principle effectively applied in this reading of the Phaedo and well supported by the results: in bringing out the differences in the perspectives of Socrates' two interlocutors on this occasion-one primarily concerned with the question of the goodness of the philosophic life, and indeed of life as such, the other motivated by a deep skepticism about the possibilities of human reason-this study leads us to see why the conversation in the Phaedo has to be divided between them, and how the strategy of each argument is motivated by its particular addressee."-Ronna Burger, Tulane University While the Phaedo is most famous for its moving portrayal of Socrates' death and its arguments for the immortality of the soul, Ahrensdorf argues that the dialogue is primarily devoted to presenting Socrates' final defense of the philosophic life against the theoretical and political challenge of religion. Through a careful analysis of both the historical context of the Phaedo and the arguments and drama of the dialogue, Ahrensdorf argues that Socrates' defense of rationalism is singularly undogmatic and that a study of that defense can lead us to a clearer understanding and a deeper and richer appreciation of the case both for and against rationalism. "This clear, extremely well-written book distinguishes itself from other fine works on the Phaedo by its careful attention to Socrates' rhetoric. It does a masterful job of showing how Socrates intends his arguments to affect Simmias and Cebes-as well as readers like them-even in cases where Socrates must have seen those arguments to be logically weak. Ahrensdorf's insight into the differences between Simmias and Cebes is excellent."-Chris A. Colmo, Rosary College

Philosophical Investigations

Catherine Rowett

Journal Philosophical Study of Education

james M magrini

Nehamas (1999) emphatically stresses that Socrates is “not a teacher of arête,” but as educators know well, it is undeniably the case that Socrates is often “perceived as a teacher,” and beyond, held up as a paragon of pedagogy to be emulated and imitated (62). At his trial, Socrates is accused of “wrongdoing because he corrupts the youth and does not believe in the gods the state believes in” (Ap. 24c). Beyond these charges, he is accused, in the manner of Anaxagoras and other Greek physical scientists, of “investigating the things beneath the earth and in the heavens,” and also charged with, in the manner of the sophists, “making the weaker argument stronger,” importantly, Socrates is, according to his accusers, “teaching [/didaskon] these things to others” (Ap. 19b-c). In his defense (apologia), Socrates distances himself from both the natural philosophers and the sophists, such as Gorgias of Leontini, Prodicus of Ceos, and Hippias of Ellis, who all charge fees for their services and usually teach through speeches or didactic methods that communicate or transfer knowledge to their pupils. In light of these remarks, returning to Nehamas, although his accusers, and even his friends consider Socrates a teacher, this offers no valid reason or sufficient evidence for us “to refuse to take his own disavowal of that role as face value” (71). The Greek, “” (didaskalos) defines a “teacher or master” of one or another subject, such as rhetoric, medicine, craft making, or even poetry (Lexicon 2015, 169). With the understanding of the didaskalos related to the type of instruction in virtue (arête) offered by the sophists, it is against the charges of Meletus that Socrates emphatically denies that he is teacher, specifically of the virtues, claiming that he “was never anyone’s teacher” (Ap. 33a).

6 (page 105) p. 105 Conclusion

Published: October 2000
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The Conclusion argues that the historical importance of Socrates, unquestionable though it is, does not exhaust his significance, even for a secular, non-ideological age. As well as a historical person and a literary persona, Socrates is an exemplary figure, who challenges, encourages, and inspires. The Socratic method of challenging students to examine their beliefs, to revise them in the light of argument, and to arrive at answers through critical reflection on the information presented goes far beyond pedagogical strategy. ‘The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being’ expresses a central human value: the willingness to rethink one's own assumptions, thereby rejecting the tendency to complacent dogmatism.

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Philosophy of Education

Philosophy of education is the branch of applied or practical philosophy concerned with the nature and aims of education and the philosophical problems arising from educational theory and practice. Because that practice is ubiquitous in and across human societies, its social and individual manifestations so varied, and its influence so profound, the subject is wide-ranging, involving issues in ethics and social/political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and language, and other areas of philosophy. Because it looks both inward to the parent discipline and outward to educational practice and the social, legal, and institutional contexts in which it takes place, philosophy of education concerns itself with both sides of the traditional theory/practice divide. Its subject matter includes both basic philosophical issues (e.g., the nature of the knowledge worth teaching, the character of educational equality and justice, etc.) and problems concerning specific educational policies and practices (e.g., the desirability of standardized curricula and testing, the social, economic, legal and moral dimensions of specific funding arrangements, the justification of curriculum decisions, etc.). In all this the philosopher of education prizes conceptual clarity, argumentative rigor, the fair-minded consideration of the interests of all involved in or affected by educational efforts and arrangements, and informed and well-reasoned valuation of educational aims and interventions.

Philosophy of education has a long and distinguished history in the Western philosophical tradition, from Socrates’ battles with the sophists to the present day. Many of the most distinguished figures in that tradition incorporated educational concerns into their broader philosophical agendas (Curren 2000, 2018; Rorty 1998). While that history is not the focus here, it is worth noting that the ideals of reasoned inquiry championed by Socrates and his descendants have long informed the view that education should foster in all students, to the extent possible, the disposition to seek reasons and the ability to evaluate them cogently, and to be guided by their evaluations in matters of belief, action and judgment. This view, that education centrally involves the fostering of reason or rationality, has with varying articulations and qualifications been embraced by most of those historical figures; it continues to be defended by contemporary philosophers of education as well (Scheffler 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988, 1997, 2007, 2017). As with any philosophical thesis it is controversial; some dimensions of the controversy are explored below.

This entry is a selective survey of important contemporary work in Anglophone philosophy of education; it does not treat in detail recent scholarship outside that context.

1. Problems in Delineating the Field

2. analytic philosophy of education and its influence, 3.1 the content of the curriculum and the aims and functions of schooling, 3.2 social, political and moral philosophy, 3.3 social epistemology, virtue epistemology, and the epistemology of education, 3.4 philosophical disputes concerning empirical education research, 4. concluding remarks, other internet resources, related entries.

The inward/outward looking nature of the field of philosophy of education alluded to above makes the task of delineating the field, of giving an over-all picture of the intellectual landscape, somewhat complicated (for a detailed account of this topography, see Phillips 1985, 2010). Suffice it to say that some philosophers, as well as focusing inward on the abstract philosophical issues that concern them, are drawn outwards to discuss or comment on issues that are more commonly regarded as falling within the purview of professional educators, educational researchers, policy-makers and the like. (An example is Michael Scriven, who in his early career was a prominent philosopher of science; later he became a central figure in the development of the field of evaluation of educational and social programs. See Scriven 1991a, 1991b.) At the same time, there are professionals in the educational or closely related spheres who are drawn to discuss one or another of the philosophical issues that they encounter in the course of their work. (An example here is the behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner, the central figure in the development of operant conditioning and programmed learning, who in works such as Walden Two (1948) and Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1972) grappled—albeit controversially—with major philosophical issues that were related to his work.)

What makes the field even more amorphous is the existence of works on educational topics, written by well-regarded philosophers who have made major contributions to their discipline; these educational reflections have little or no philosophical content, illustrating the truth that philosophers do not always write philosophy. However, despite this, works in this genre have often been treated as contributions to philosophy of education. (Examples include John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education [1693] and Bertrand Russell’s rollicking pieces written primarily to raise funds to support a progressive school he ran with his wife. (See Park 1965.)

Finally, as indicated earlier, the domain of education is vast, the issues it raises are almost overwhelmingly numerous and are of great complexity, and the social significance of the field is second to none. These features make the phenomena and problems of education of great interest to a wide range of socially-concerned intellectuals, who bring with them their own favored conceptual frameworks—concepts, theories and ideologies, methods of analysis and argumentation, metaphysical and other assumptions, and the like. It is not surprising that scholars who work in this broad genre also find a home in the field of philosophy of education.

As a result of these various factors, the significant intellectual and social trends of the past few centuries, together with the significant developments in philosophy, all have had an impact on the content of arguments and methods of argumentation in philosophy of education—Marxism, psycho-analysis, existentialism, phenomenology, positivism, post-modernism, pragmatism, neo-liberalism, the several waves of feminism, analytic philosophy in both its ordinary language and more formal guises, are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Conceptual analysis, careful assessment of arguments, the rooting out of ambiguity, the drawing of clarifying distinctions—all of which are at least part of the philosophical toolkit—have been respected activities within philosophy from the dawn of the field. No doubt it somewhat over-simplifies the complex path of intellectual history to suggest that what happened in the twentieth century—early on, in the home discipline itself, and with a lag of a decade or more in philosophy of education—is that philosophical analysis came to be viewed by some scholars as being the major philosophical activity (or set of activities), or even as being the only viable or reputable activity. In any case, as they gained prominence and for a time hegemonic influence during the rise of analytic philosophy early in the twentieth century analytic techniques came to dominate philosophy of education in the middle third of that century (Curren, Robertson, & Hager 2003).

The pioneering work in the modern period entirely in an analytic mode was the short monograph by C.D. Hardie, Truth and Fallacy in Educational Theory (1941; reissued in 1962). In his Introduction, Hardie (who had studied with C.D. Broad and I.A. Richards) made it clear that he was putting all his eggs into the ordinary-language-analysis basket:

The Cambridge analytical school, led by Moore, Broad and Wittgenstein, has attempted so to analyse propositions that it will always be apparent whether the disagreement between philosophers is one concerning matters of fact, or is one concerning the use of words, or is, as is frequently the case, a purely emotive one. It is time, I think, that a similar attitude became common in the field of educational theory. (Hardie 1962: xix)

About a decade after the end of the Second World War the floodgates opened and a stream of work in the analytic mode appeared; the following is merely a sample. D. J. O’Connor published An Introduction to Philosophy of Education (1957) in which, among other things, he argued that the word “theory” as it is used in educational contexts is merely a courtesy title, for educational theories are nothing like what bear this title in the natural sciences. Israel Scheffler, who became the paramount philosopher of education in North America, produced a number of important works including The Language of Education (1960), which contained clarifying and influential analyses of definitions (he distinguished reportive, stipulative, and programmatic types) and the logic of slogans (often these are literally meaningless, and, he argued, should be seen as truncated arguments), Conditions of Knowledge (1965), still the best introduction to the epistemological side of philosophy of education, and Reason and Teaching (1973 [1989]), which in a wide-ranging and influential series of essays makes the case for regarding the fostering of rationality/critical thinking as a fundamental educational ideal (cf. Siegel 2016). B. O. Smith and R. H. Ennis edited the volume Language and Concepts in Education (1961); and R.D. Archambault edited Philosophical Analysis and Education (1965), consisting of essays by a number of prominent British writers, most notably R. S. Peters (whose status in Britain paralleled that of Scheffler in the United States), Paul Hirst, and John Wilson. Topics covered in the Archambault volume were typical of those that became the “bread and butter” of analytic philosophy of education (APE) throughout the English-speaking world—education as a process of initiation, liberal education, the nature of knowledge, types of teaching, and instruction versus indoctrination.

Among the most influential products of APE was the analysis developed by Hirst and Peters (1970) and Peters (1973) of the concept of education itself. Using as a touchstone “normal English usage,” it was concluded that a person who has been educated (rather than instructed or indoctrinated) has been (i) changed for the better; (ii) this change has involved the acquisition of knowledge and intellectual skills and the development of understanding; and (iii) the person has come to care for, or be committed to, the domains of knowledge and skill into which he or she has been initiated. The method used by Hirst and Peters comes across clearly in their handling of the analogy with the concept of “reform”, one they sometimes drew upon for expository purposes. A criminal who has been reformed has changed for the better, and has developed a commitment to the new mode of life (if one or other of these conditions does not hold, a speaker of standard English would not say the criminal has been reformed). Clearly the analogy with reform breaks down with respect to the knowledge and understanding conditions. Elsewhere Peters developed the fruitful notion of “education as initiation”.

The concept of indoctrination was also of great interest to analytic philosophers of education, for, it was argued, getting clear about precisely what constitutes indoctrination also would serve to clarify the border that demarcates it from acceptable educational processes. Thus, whether or not an instructional episode was a case of indoctrination was determined by the content taught, the intention of the instructor, the methods of instruction used, the outcomes of the instruction, or by some combination of these. Adherents of the different analyses used the same general type of argument to make their case, namely, appeal to normal and aberrant usage. Unfortunately, ordinary language analysis did not lead to unanimity of opinion about where this border was located, and rival analyses of the concept were put forward (Snook 1972). The danger of restricting analysis to ordinary language (“normal English usage”) was recognized early on by Scheffler, whose preferred view of analysis emphasized

first, its greater sophistication as regards language, and the interpenetration of language and inquiry, second, its attempt to follow the modern example of the sciences in empirical spirit, in rigor, in attention to detail, in respect for alternatives, and in objectivity of method, and third, its use of techniques of symbolic logic brought to full development only in the last fifty years… It is…this union of scientific spirit and logical method applied toward the clarification of basic ideas that characterizes current analytic philosophy [and that ought to characterize analytic philosophy of education]. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 9–10])

After a period of dominance, for a number of important reasons the influence of APE went into decline. First, there were growing criticisms that the work of analytic philosophers of education had become focused upon minutiae and in the main was bereft of practical import. (It is worth noting that a 1966 article in Time , reprinted in Lucas 1969, had put forward the same criticism of mainstream philosophy.) Second, in the early 1970’s radical students in Britain accused Peters’ brand of linguistic analysis of conservatism, and of tacitly giving support to “traditional values”—they raised the issue of whose English usage was being analyzed?

Third, criticisms of language analysis in mainstream philosophy had been mounting for some time, and finally after a lag of many years were reaching the attention of philosophers of education; there even had been a surprising degree of interest on the part of the general reading public in the United Kingdom as early as 1959, when Gilbert Ryle, editor of the journal Mind , refused to commission a review of Ernest Gellner’s Words and Things (1959)—a detailed and quite acerbic critique of Wittgenstein’s philosophy and its espousal of ordinary language analysis. (Ryle argued that Gellner’s book was too insulting, a view that drew Bertrand Russell into the fray on Gellner’s side—in the daily press, no less; Russell produced a list of insulting remarks drawn from the work of great philosophers of the past. See Mehta 1963.)

Richard Peters had been given warning that all was not well with APE at a conference in Canada in 1966; after delivering a paper on “The aims of education: A conceptual inquiry” that was based on ordinary language analysis, a philosopher in the audience (William Dray) asked Peters “ whose concepts do we analyze?” Dray went on to suggest that different people, and different groups within society, have different concepts of education. Five years before the radical students raised the same issue, Dray pointed to the possibility that what Peters had presented under the guise of a “logical analysis” was nothing but the favored usage of a certain class of persons—a class that Peters happened to identify with (see Peters 1973, where to the editor’s credit the interaction with Dray is reprinted).

Fourth, during the decade of the seventies when these various critiques of analytic philosophy were in the process of eroding its luster, a spate of translations from the Continent stimulated some philosophers of education in Britain and North America to set out in new directions, and to adopt a new style of writing and argumentation. Key works by Gadamer, Foucault and Derrida appeared in English, and these were followed in 1984 by Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition . The classic works of Heidegger and Husserl also found new admirers; and feminist philosophers of education were finding their voices—Maxine Greene published a number of pieces in the 1970s and 1980s, including The Dialectic of Freedom (1988); the influential book by Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education , appeared the same year as the work by Lyotard, followed a year later by Jane Roland Martin’s Reclaiming a Conversation . In more recent years all these trends have continued. APE was and is no longer the center of interest, although, as indicated below, it still retains its voice.

3. Areas of Contemporary Activity

As was stressed at the outset, the field of education is huge and contains within it a virtually inexhaustible number of issues that are of philosophical interest. To attempt comprehensive coverage of how philosophers of education have been working within this thicket would be a quixotic task for a large single volume and is out of the question for a solitary encyclopedia entry. Nevertheless, a valiant attempt to give an overview was made in A Companion to the Philosophy of Education (Curren 2003), which contains more than six-hundred pages divided into forty-five chapters each of which surveys a subfield of work. The following random selection of chapter topics gives a sense of the enormous scope of the field: Sex education, special education, science education, aesthetic education, theories of teaching and learning, religious education, knowledge, truth and learning, cultivating reason, the measurement of learning, multicultural education, education and the politics of identity, education and standards of living, motivation and classroom management, feminism, critical theory, postmodernism, romanticism, the purposes of universities, affirmative action in higher education, and professional education. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education (Siegel 2009) contains a similarly broad range of articles on (among other things) the epistemic and moral aims of education, liberal education and its imminent demise, thinking and reasoning, fallibilism and fallibility, indoctrination, authenticity, the development of rationality, Socratic teaching, educating the imagination, caring and empathy in moral education, the limits of moral education, the cultivation of character, values education, curriculum and the value of knowledge, education and democracy, art and education, science education and religious toleration, constructivism and scientific methods, multicultural education, prejudice, authority and the interests of children, and on pragmatist, feminist, and postmodernist approaches to philosophy of education.

Given this enormous range, there is no non-arbitrary way to select a small number of topics for further discussion, nor can the topics that are chosen be pursued in great depth. The choice of those below has been made with an eye to highlighting contemporary work that makes solid contact with and contributes to important discussions in general philosophy and/or the academic educational and educational research communities.

The issue of what should be taught to students at all levels of education—the issue of curriculum content—obviously is a fundamental one, and it is an extraordinarily difficult one with which to grapple. In tackling it, care needs to be taken to distinguish between education and schooling—for although education can occur in schools, so can mis-education, and many other things can take place there that are educationally orthogonal (such as the provision of free or subsidized lunches and the development of social networks); and it also must be recognized that education can occur in the home, in libraries and museums, in churches and clubs, in solitary interaction with the public media, and the like.

In developing a curriculum (whether in a specific subject area, or more broadly as the whole range of offerings in an educational institution or system), a number of difficult decisions need to be made. Issues such as the proper ordering or sequencing of topics in the chosen subject, the time to be allocated to each topic, the lab work or excursions or projects that are appropriate for particular topics, can all be regarded as technical issues best resolved either by educationists who have a depth of experience with the target age group or by experts in the psychology of learning and the like. But there are deeper issues, ones concerning the validity of the justifications that have been given for including/excluding particular subjects or topics in the offerings of formal educational institutions. (Why should evolution or creation “science” be included, or excluded, as a topic within the standard high school subject Biology? Is the justification that is given for teaching Economics in some schools coherent and convincing? Do the justifications for including/excluding materials on birth control, patriotism, the Holocaust or wartime atrocities in the curriculum in some school districts stand up to critical scrutiny?)

The different justifications for particular items of curriculum content that have been put forward by philosophers and others since Plato’s pioneering efforts all draw, explicitly or implicitly, upon the positions that the respective theorists hold about at least three sets of issues.

First, what are the aims and/or functions of education (aims and functions are not necessarily the same)? Many aims have been proposed; a short list includes the production of knowledge and knowledgeable students, the fostering of curiosity and inquisitiveness, the enhancement of understanding, the enlargement of the imagination, the civilizing of students, the fostering of rationality and/or autonomy, and the development in students of care, concern and associated dispositions and attitudes (see Siegel 2007 for a longer list). The justifications offered for all such aims have been controversial, and alternative justifications of a single proposed aim can provoke philosophical controversy. Consider the aim of autonomy. Aristotle asked, what constitutes the good life and/or human flourishing, such that education should foster these (Curren 2013)? These two formulations are related, for it is arguable that our educational institutions should aim to equip individuals to pursue this good life—although this is not obvious, both because it is not clear that there is one conception of the good or flourishing life that is the good or flourishing life for everyone, and it is not clear that this is a question that should be settled in advance rather than determined by students for themselves. Thus, for example, if our view of human flourishing includes the capacity to think and act autonomously, then the case can be made that educational institutions—and their curricula—should aim to prepare, or help to prepare, autonomous individuals. A rival justification of the aim of autonomy, associated with Kant, champions the educational fostering of autonomy not on the basis of its contribution to human flourishing, but rather the obligation to treat students with respect as persons (Scheffler 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988). Still others urge the fostering of autonomy on the basis of students’ fundamental interests, in ways that draw upon both Aristotelian and Kantian conceptual resources (Brighouse 2005, 2009). It is also possible to reject the fostering of autonomy as an educational aim (Hand 2006).

Assuming that the aim can be justified, how students should be helped to become autonomous or develop a conception of the good life and pursue it is of course not immediately obvious, and much philosophical ink has been spilled on the general question of how best to determine curriculum content. One influential line of argument was developed by Paul Hirst, who argued that knowledge is essential for developing and then pursuing a conception of the good life, and because logical analysis shows, he argued, that there are seven basic forms of knowledge, the case can be made that the function of the curriculum is to introduce students to each of these forms (Hirst 1965; see Phillips 1987: ch. 11). Another, suggested by Scheffler, is that curriculum content should be selected so as “to help the learner attain maximum self-sufficiency as economically as possible.” The relevant sorts of economy include those of resources, teacher effort, student effort, and the generalizability or transfer value of content, while the self-sufficiency in question includes

self-awareness, imaginative weighing of alternative courses of action, understanding of other people’s choices and ways of life, decisiveness without rigidity, emancipation from stereotyped ways of thinking and perceiving…empathy… intuition, criticism and independent judgment. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 123–5])

Both impose important constraints on the curricular content to be taught.

Second, is it justifiable to treat the curriculum of an educational institution as a vehicle for furthering the socio-political interests and goals of a dominant group, or any particular group, including one’s own; and relatedly, is it justifiable to design the curriculum so that it serves as an instrument of control or of social engineering? In the closing decades of the twentieth century there were numerous discussions of curriculum theory, particularly from Marxist and postmodern perspectives, that offered the sobering analysis that in many educational systems, including those in Western democracies, the curriculum did indeed reflect and serve the interests of powerful cultural elites. What to do about this situation (if it is indeed the situation of contemporary educational institutions) is far from clear and is the focus of much work at the interface of philosophy of education and social/political philosophy, some of which is discussed in the next section. A closely related question is this: ought educational institutions be designed to further pre-determined social ends, or rather to enable students to competently evaluate all such ends? Scheffler argued that we should opt for the latter: we must

surrender the idea of shaping or molding the mind of the pupil. The function of education…is rather to liberate the mind, strengthen its critical powers, [and] inform it with knowledge and the capacity for independent inquiry. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 139])

Third, should educational programs at the elementary and secondary levels be made up of a number of disparate offerings, so that individuals with different interests and abilities and affinities for learning can pursue curricula that are suitable? Or should every student pursue the same curriculum as far as each is able?—a curriculum, it should be noted, that in past cases nearly always was based on the needs or interests of those students who were academically inclined or were destined for elite social roles. Mortimer Adler and others in the late twentieth century sometimes used the aphorism “the best education for the best is the best education for all.”

The thinking here can be explicated in terms of the analogy of an out-of-control virulent disease, for which there is only one type of medicine available; taking a large dose of this medicine is extremely beneficial, and the hope is that taking only a little—while less effective—is better than taking none at all. Medically, this is dubious, while the educational version—forcing students to work, until they exit the system, on topics that do not interest them and for which they have no facility or motivation—has even less merit. (For a critique of Adler and his Paideia Proposal , see Noddings 2015.) It is interesting to compare the modern “one curriculum track for all” position with Plato’s system outlined in the Republic , according to which all students—and importantly this included girls—set out on the same course of study. Over time, as they moved up the educational ladder it would become obvious that some had reached the limit imposed upon them by nature, and they would be directed off into appropriate social roles in which they would find fulfillment, for their abilities would match the demands of these roles. Those who continued on with their education would eventually become members of the ruling class of Guardians.

The publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971 was the most notable event in the history of political philosophy over the last century. The book spurred a period of ferment in political philosophy that included, among other things, new research on educationally fundamental themes. The principles of justice in educational distribution have perhaps been the dominant theme in this literature, and Rawls’s influence on its development has been pervasive.

Rawls’s theory of justice made so-called “fair equality of opportunity” one of its constitutive principles. Fair equality of opportunity entailed that the distribution of education would not put the children of those who currently occupied coveted social positions at any competitive advantage over other, equally talented and motivated children seeking the qualifications for those positions (Rawls 1971: 72–75). Its purpose was to prevent socio-economic differences from hardening into social castes that were perpetuated across generations. One obvious criticism of fair equality of opportunity is that it does not prohibit an educational distribution that lavished resources on the most talented children while offering minimal opportunities to others. So long as untalented students from wealthy families were assigned opportunities no better than those available to their untalented peers among the poor, no breach of the principle would occur. Even the most moderate egalitarians might find such a distributive regime to be intuitively repugnant.

Repugnance might be mitigated somewhat by the ways in which the overall structure of Rawls’s conception of justice protects the interests of those who fare badly in educational competition. All citizens must enjoy the same basic liberties, and equal liberty always has moral priority over equal opportunity: the former can never be compromised to advance the latter. Further, inequality in the distribution of income and wealth are permitted only to the degree that it serves the interests of the least advantaged group in society. But even with these qualifications, fair equality of opportunity is arguably less than really fair to anyone. The fact that their education should secure ends other than access to the most selective social positions—ends such as artistic appreciation, the kind of self-knowledge that humanistic study can furnish, or civic virtue—is deemed irrelevant according to Rawls’s principle. But surely it is relevant, given that a principle of educational justice must be responsive to the full range of educationally important goods.

Suppose we revise our account of the goods included in educational distribution so that aesthetic appreciation, say, and the necessary understanding and virtue for conscientious citizenship count for just as much as job-related skills. An interesting implication of doing so is that the rationale for requiring equality under any just distribution becomes decreasingly clear. That is because job-related skills are positional whereas the other educational goods are not (Hollis 1982). If you and I both aspire to a career in business management for which we are equally qualified, any increase in your job-related skills is a corresponding disadvantage to me unless I can catch up. Positional goods have a competitive structure by definition, though the ends of civic or aesthetic education do not fit that structure. If you and I aspire to be good citizens and are equal in civic understanding and virtue, an advance in your civic education is no disadvantage to me. On the contrary, it is easier to be a good citizen the better other citizens learn to be. At the very least, so far as non-positional goods figure in our conception of what counts as a good education, the moral stakes of inequality are thereby lowered.

In fact, an emerging alternative to fair equality of opportunity is a principle that stipulates some benchmark of adequacy in achievement or opportunity as the relevant standard of distribution. But it is misleading to represent this as a contrast between egalitarian and sufficientarian conceptions. Philosophically serious interpretations of adequacy derive from the ideal of equal citizenship (Satz 2007; Anderson 2007). Then again, fair equality of opportunity in Rawls’s theory is derived from a more fundamental ideal of equality among citizens. This was arguably true in A Theory of Justice but it is certainly true in his later work (Dworkin 1977: 150–183; Rawls 1993). So, both Rawls’s principle and the emerging alternative share an egalitarian foundation. The debate between adherents of equal opportunity and those misnamed as sufficientarians is certainly not over (e.g., Brighouse & Swift 2009; Jacobs 2010; Warnick 2015). Further progress will likely hinge on explicating the most compelling conception of the egalitarian foundation from which distributive principles are to be inferred. Another Rawls-inspired alternative is that a “prioritarian” distribution of achievement or opportunity might turn out to be the best principle we can come up with—i.e., one that favors the interests of the least advantaged students (Schouten 2012).

The publication of Rawls’s Political Liberalism in 1993 signaled a decisive turning point in his thinking about justice. In his earlier book, the theory of justice had been presented as if it were universally valid. But Rawls had come to think that any theory of justice presented as such was open to reasonable rejection. A more circumspect approach to justification would seek grounds for justice as fairness in an overlapping consensus between the many reasonable values and doctrines that thrive in a democratic political culture. Rawls argued that such a culture is informed by a shared ideal of free and equal citizenship that provided a new, distinctively democratic framework for justifying a conception of justice. The shift to political liberalism involved little revision on Rawls’s part to the content of the principles he favored. But the salience it gave to questions about citizenship in the fabric of liberal political theory had important educational implications. How was the ideal of free and equal citizenship to be instantiated in education in a way that accommodated the range of reasonable values and doctrines encompassed in an overlapping consensus? Political Liberalism has inspired a range of answers to that question (cf. Callan 1997; Clayton 2006; Bull 2008).

Other philosophers besides Rawls in the 1990s took up a cluster of questions about civic education, and not always from a liberal perspective. Alasdair Macintyre’s After Virtue (1984) strongly influenced the development of communitarian political theory which, as its very name might suggest, argued that the cultivation of community could preempt many of the problems with conflicting individual rights at the core of liberalism. As a full-standing alternative to liberalism, communitarianism might have little to recommend it. But it was a spur for liberal philosophers to think about how communities could be built and sustained to support the more familiar projects of liberal politics (e.g., Strike 2010). Furthermore, its arguments often converged with those advanced by feminist exponents of the ethic of care (Noddings 1984; Gilligan 1982). Noddings’ work is particularly notable because she inferred a cogent and radical agenda for the reform of schools from her conception of care (Noddings 1992).

One persistent controversy in citizenship theory has been about whether patriotism is correctly deemed a virtue, given our obligations to those who are not our fellow citizens in an increasingly interdependent world and the sordid history of xenophobia with which modern nation states are associated. The controversy is partly about what we should teach in our schools and is commonly discussed by philosophers in that context (Galston 1991; Ben-Porath 2006; Callan 2006; Miller 2007; Curren & Dorn 2018). The controversy is related to a deeper and more pervasive question about how morally or intellectually taxing the best conception of our citizenship should be. The more taxing it is, the more constraining its derivative conception of civic education will be. Contemporary political philosophers offer divergent arguments about these matters. For example, Gutmann and Thompson claim that citizens of diverse democracies need to “understand the diverse ways of life of their fellow citizens” (Gutmann & Thompson 1996: 66). The need arises from the obligation of reciprocity which they (like Rawls) believe to be integral to citizenship. Because I must seek to cooperate with others politically on terms that make sense from their moral perspective as well as my own, I must be ready to enter that perspective imaginatively so as to grasp its distinctive content. Many such perspectives prosper in liberal democracies, and so the task of reciprocal understanding is necessarily onerous. Still, our actions qua deliberative citizen must be grounded in such reciprocity if political cooperation on terms acceptable to us as (diversely) morally motivated citizens is to be possible at all. This is tantamount to an imperative to think autonomously inside the role of citizen because I cannot close-mindedly resist critical consideration of moral views alien to my own without flouting my responsibilities as a deliberative citizen.

Civic education does not exhaust the domain of moral education, even though the more robust conceptions of equal citizenship have far-reaching implications for just relations in civil society and the family. The study of moral education has traditionally taken its bearings from normative ethics rather than political philosophy, and this is largely true of work undertaken in recent decades. The major development here has been the revival of virtue ethics as an alternative to the deontological and consequentialist theories that dominated discussion for much of the twentieth century.

The defining idea of virtue ethics is that our criterion of moral right and wrong must derive from a conception of how the ideally virtuous agent would distinguish between the two. Virtue ethics is thus an alternative to both consequentialism and deontology which locate the relevant criterion in producing good consequences or meeting the requirements of moral duty respectively. The debate about the comparative merits of these theories is not resolved, but from an educational perspective that may be less important than it has sometimes seemed to antagonists in the debate. To be sure, adjudicating between rival theories in normative ethics might shed light on how best to construe the process of moral education, and philosophical reflection on the process might help us to adjudicate between the theories. There has been extensive work on habituation and virtue, largely inspired by Aristotle (Burnyeat 1980; Peters 1981). But whether this does anything to establish the superiority of virtue ethics over its competitors is far from obvious. Other aspects of moral education—in particular, the paired processes of role-modelling and identification—deserve much more scrutiny than they have received (Audi 2017; Kristjánsson 2015, 2017).

Related to the issues concerning the aims and functions of education and schooling rehearsed above are those involving the specifically epistemic aims of education and attendant issues treated by social and virtue epistemologists. (The papers collected in Kotzee 2013 and Baehr 2016 highlight the current and growing interactions among social epistemologists, virtue epistemologists, and philosophers of education.)

There is, first, a lively debate concerning putative epistemic aims. Alvin Goldman argues that truth (or knowledge understood in the “weak” sense of true belief) is the fundamental epistemic aim of education (Goldman 1999). Others, including the majority of historically significant philosophers of education, hold that critical thinking or rationality and rational belief (or knowledge in the “strong” sense that includes justification) is the basic epistemic educational aim (Bailin & Siegel 2003; Scheffler 1965, 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988, 1997, 2005, 2017). Catherine Z. Elgin (1999a,b) and Duncan Pritchard (2013, 2016; Carter & Pritchard 2017) have independently urged that understanding is the basic aim. Pritchard’s view combines understanding with intellectual virtue ; Jason Baehr (2011) systematically defends the fostering of the intellectual virtues as the fundamental epistemic aim of education. This cluster of views continues to engender ongoing discussion and debate. (Its complex literature is collected in Carter and Kotzee 2015, summarized in Siegel 2018, and helpfully analyzed in Watson 2016.)

A further controversy concerns the places of testimony and trust in the classroom: In what circumstances if any ought students to trust their teachers’ pronouncements, and why? Here the epistemology of education is informed by social epistemology, specifically the epistemology of testimony; the familiar reductionism/anti-reductionism controversy there is applicable to students and teachers. Anti-reductionists, who regard testimony as a basic source of justification, may with equanimity approve of students’ taking their teachers’ word at face value and believing what they say; reductionists may balk. Does teacher testimony itself constitute good reason for student belief?

The correct answer here seems clearly enough to be “it depends”. For very young children who have yet to acquire or develop the ability to subject teacher declarations to critical scrutiny, there seems to be little alternative to accepting what their teachers tell them. For older and more cognitively sophisticated students there seem to be more options: they can assess them for plausibility, compare them with other opinions, assess the teachers’ proffered reasons, subject them to independent evaluation, etc. Regarding “the teacher says that p ” as itself a good reason to believe it appears moreover to contravene the widely shared conviction that an important educational aim is helping students to become able to evaluate candidate beliefs for themselves and believe accordingly. That said, all sides agree that sometimes believers, including students, have good reasons simply to trust what others tell them. There is thus more work to do here by both social epistemologists and philosophers of education (for further discussion see Goldberg 2013; Siegel 2005, 2018).

A further cluster of questions, of long-standing interest to philosophers of education, concerns indoctrination : How if at all does it differ from legitimate teaching? Is it inevitable, and if so is it not always necessarily bad? First, what is it? As we saw earlier, extant analyses focus on the aims or intentions of the indoctrinator, the methods employed, or the content transmitted. If the indoctrination is successful, all have the result that students/victims either don’t, won’t, or can’t subject the indoctrinated material to proper epistemic evaluation. In this way it produces both belief that is evidentially unsupported or contravened and uncritical dispositions to believe. It might seem obvious that indoctrination, so understood, is educationally undesirable. But it equally seems that very young children, at least, have no alternative but to believe sans evidence; they have yet to acquire the dispositions to seek and evaluate evidence, or the abilities to recognize evidence or evaluate it. Thus we seem driven to the views that indoctrination is both unavoidable and yet bad and to be avoided. It is not obvious how this conundrum is best handled. One option is to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable indoctrination. Another is to distinguish between indoctrination (which is always bad) and non-indoctrinating belief inculcation, the latter being such that students are taught some things without reasons (the alphabet, the numbers, how to read and count, etc.), but in such a way that critical evaluation of all such material (and everything else) is prized and fostered (Siegel 1988: ch. 5). In the end the distinctions required by the two options might be extensionally equivalent (Siegel 2018).

Education, it is generally granted, fosters belief : in the typical propositional case, Smith teaches Jones that p , and if all goes well Jones learns it and comes to believe it. Education also has the task of fostering open-mindedness and an appreciation of our fallibility : All the theorists mentioned thus far, especially those in the critical thinking and intellectual virtue camps, urge their importance. But these two might seem at odds. If Jones (fully) believes that p , can she also be open-minded about it? Can she believe, for example, that earthquakes are caused by the movements of tectonic plates, while also believing that perhaps they aren’t? This cluster of italicized notions requires careful handling; it is helpfully discussed by Jonathan Adler (2002, 2003), who recommends regarding the latter two as meta-attitudes concerning one’s first-order beliefs rather than lessened degrees of belief or commitments to those beliefs.

Other traditional epistemological worries that impinge upon the epistemology of education concern (a) absolutism , pluralism and relativism with respect to knowledge, truth and justification as these relate to what is taught, (b) the character and status of group epistemologies and the prospects for understanding such epistemic goods “universalistically” in the face of “particularist” challenges, (c) the relation between “knowledge-how” and “knowledge-that” and their respective places in the curriculum, (d) concerns raised by multiculturalism and the inclusion/exclusion of marginalized perspectives in curriculum content and the classroom, and (e) further issues concerning teaching and learning. (There is more here than can be briefly summarized; for more references and systematic treatment cf. Bailin & Siegel 2003; Carter & Kotzee 2015; Cleverley & Phillips 1986; Robertson 2009; Siegel 2004, 2017; and Watson 2016.)

The educational research enterprise has been criticized for a century or more by politicians, policymakers, administrators, curriculum developers, teachers, philosophers of education, and by researchers themselves—but the criticisms have been contradictory. Charges of being “too ivory tower and theory-oriented” are found alongside “too focused on practice and too atheoretical”; but in light of the views of John Dewey and William James that the function of theory is to guide intelligent practice and problem-solving, it is becoming more fashionable to hold that the “theory v. practice” dichotomy is a false one. (For an illuminating account of the historical development of educational research and its tribulations, see Lagemann 2000.)

A similar trend can be discerned with respect to the long warfare between two rival groups of research methods—on one hand quantitative/statistical approaches to research, and on the other hand the qualitative/ethnographic family. (The choice of labels here is not entirely risk-free, for they have been contested; furthermore the first approach is quite often associated with “experimental” studies, and the latter with “case studies”, but this is an over-simplification.) For several decades these two rival methodological camps were treated by researchers and a few philosophers of education as being rival paradigms (Kuhn’s ideas, albeit in a very loose form, have been influential in the field of educational research), and the dispute between them was commonly referred to as “the paradigm wars”. In essence the issue at stake was epistemological: members of the quantitative/experimental camp believed that only their methods could lead to well-warranted knowledge claims, especially about the causal factors at play in educational phenomena, and on the whole they regarded qualitative methods as lacking in rigor; on the other hand the adherents of qualitative/ethnographic approaches held that the other camp was too “positivistic” and was operating with an inadequate view of causation in human affairs—one that ignored the role of motives and reasons, possession of relevant background knowledge, awareness of cultural norms, and the like. Few if any commentators in the “paradigm wars” suggested that there was anything prohibiting the use of both approaches in the one research program—provided that if both were used, they were used only sequentially or in parallel, for they were underwritten by different epistemologies and hence could not be blended together. But recently the trend has been towards rapprochement, towards the view that the two methodological families are, in fact, compatible and are not at all like paradigms in the Kuhnian sense(s) of the term; the melding of the two approaches is often called “mixed methods research”, and it is growing in popularity. (For more detailed discussion of these “wars” see Howe 2003 and Phillips 2009.)

The most lively contemporary debates about education research, however, were set in motion around the turn of the millennium when the US Federal Government moved in the direction of funding only rigorously scientific educational research—the kind that could establish causal factors which could then guide the development of practically effective policies. (It was held that such a causal knowledge base was available for medical decision-making.) The definition of “rigorously scientific”, however, was decided by politicians and not by the research community, and it was given in terms of the use of a specific research method—the net effect being that the only research projects to receive Federal funding were those that carried out randomized controlled experiments or field trials (RFTs). It has become common over the last decade to refer to the RFT as the “gold standard” methodology.

The National Research Council (NRC)—an arm of the US National Academies of Science—issued a report, influenced by postpostivistic philosophy of science (NRC 2002), that argued that this criterion was far too narrow. Numerous essays have appeared subsequently that point out how the “gold standard” account of scientific rigor distorts the history of science, how the complex nature of the relation between evidence and policy-making has been distorted and made to appear overly simple (for instance the role of value-judgments in linking empirical findings to policy directives is often overlooked), and qualitative researchers have insisted upon the scientific nature of their work. Nevertheless, and possibly because it tried to be balanced and supported the use of RFTs in some research contexts, the NRC report has been the subject of symposia in four journals, where it has been supported by a few and attacked from a variety of philosophical fronts: Its authors were positivists, they erroneously believed that educational inquiry could be value neutral and that it could ignore the ways in which the exercise of power constrains the research process, they misunderstood the nature of educational phenomena, and so on. This cluster of issues continues to be debated by educational researchers and by philosophers of education and of science, and often involves basic topics in philosophy of science: the constitution of warranting evidence, the nature of theories and of confirmation and explanation, etc. Nancy Cartwright’s important recent work on causation, evidence, and evidence-based policy adds layers of both philosophical sophistication and real world practical analysis to the central issues just discussed (Cartwright & Hardie 2012, Cartwright 2013; cf. Kvernbekk 2015 for an overview of the controversies regarding evidence in the education and philosophy of education literatures).

As stressed earlier, it is impossible to do justice to the whole field of philosophy of education in a single encyclopedia entry. Different countries around the world have their own intellectual traditions and their own ways of institutionalizing philosophy of education in the academic universe, and no discussion of any of this appears in the present essay. But even in the Anglo-American world there is such a diversity of approaches that any author attempting to produce a synoptic account will quickly run into the borders of his or her competence. Clearly this has happened in the present case.

Fortunately, in the last thirty years or so resources have become available that significantly alleviate these problems. There has been a flood of encyclopedia entries, both on the field as a whole and also on many specific topics not well-covered in the present essay (see, as a sample, Burbules 1994; Chambliss 1996b; Curren 1998, 2018; Phillips 1985, 2010; Siegel 2007; Smeyers 1994), two “Encyclopedias” (Chambliss 1996a; Phillips 2014), a “Guide” (Blake, Smeyers, Smith, & Standish 2003), a “Companion” (Curren 2003), two “Handbooks” (Siegel 2009; Bailey, Barrow, Carr, & McCarthy 2010), a comprehensive anthology (Curren 2007), a dictionary of key concepts in the field (Winch & Gingell 1999), and a good textbook or two (Carr 2003; Noddings 2015). In addition there are numerous volumes both of reprinted selections and of specially commissioned essays on specific topics, some of which were given short shrift here (for another sampling see A. Rorty 1998, Stone 1994), and several international journals, including Theory and Research in Education , Journal of Philosophy of Education , Educational Theory , Studies in Philosophy and Education , and Educational Philosophy and Theory . Thus there is more than enough material available to keep the interested reader busy.

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Socrates’ Life and Contributions to Philosophy Essay

Introduction, socrates’s life and career, ideas and contributions to philosophy, works cited.

The development of philosophical thought becomes possible due to the activity of courageous people that are not afraid of challenging long-term traditions and views of life. Socrates, one of the most famous Greek thinkers, is an example of an individual who revolutionized philosophy and stayed committed to his principles in any circumstances. His key contributions to the field include the Socratic Method that facilitates the critical analysis of hypotheses, ideas about morality and wrongdoing, and the concepts of immortal soul and preexistence.

Many centuries have passed since the birth of Socrates, but he is still regarded as a source of wisdom and an inspirational figure in the world of philosophy. Socrates was born in Athens circa 469 BC and died in 399 BC at the age of seventy (D’Angour 5). Some popular myths state that Socrates came from an economically disadvantaged background and had limited educational opportunities.

However, based on the common themes found in his disciples’ works, Socrates was a son of relatively well-off parents and grew up being surrounded by the Athenian elite of the time (D’Angour 12). As a child, Socrates dreamed about becoming a strong warrior or a successful politician, and years later, he had a chance to demonstrate his talent in military arts (D’Angour 12). In addition to that, he had other gifts that contributed to the popularity of his philosophical views.

Being a teenager and then a young man, Socrates always had a thirst for knowledge and worked hard to develop new skills. He learned a lot from the best music teachers and political advisors, including Damon, and practiced the art of singing and playing the lyre (D’Angour 13). Additionally, it is presumed that at a young age, Socrates was trained to follow the trade of his father and become a stonemason (D’Angour 12).

His earliest participation in armed conflicts was around 447 BC, when one of the most known battles of the Peloponnesian War, the Battle of Coronea, was fought (D’Angour 5). During his service, he gained the reputation of a polemist that could not be beaten in an argument and did not care about material possessions. Unlike other philosophers, he did not produce written works to express his principles of life.

Due to his self-righteousness and the ability to find the best words to defeat his opponents verbally, Socrates was a character of some comic plays that aimed to expose his mistakes and exaggerate them. For instance, in 423 BC, Aristophanes caricatured him in the play titled Clouds (Moore 534). In this literary work, the philosopher is portrayed as a person who teaches a young man to distort the truth to reach his own goals. In particular, the student learns how to use the art of rhetoric to tire money-lenders with idle talk and distract them from his debts (Moore 534). Therefore, the critics of Socrates depicted him as a sophist and an unprincipled teacher.

Socrates’s fidelity to his principles admired many of his peers and cost him a life. His death was related to political reasons since after the Thirty Tyrants came to power, the situation in the state changed drastically (Saxonhouse 17). In 399 BC, after the Tyrants’ defeat, Socrates was accused of supporting anti-democratic views and corrupting young people in Athens and placed on trial (D’Angour 6; Saxonhouse 17). In Plato’s Apology describing the events, Socrates is presented as a shameless person who gives a speech to prove his wisdom instead of invoking people’s mercy (Saxonhouse 18). As a result, the court found him guilty of blasphemy and erosion of value and traditions, and the philosopher was executed by poison.

The Socratic Method, Moral Knowledge, and Wrongdoing

Socrates was extremely different from other philosophers of the time since he did not produce writings to immortalize his key ideas. The so-called Socratic Method of inquiry is among the key contributions that he made to the philosophical thought of the next centuries, especially moral philosophy. Socrates was one of the first thinkers focusing on the notions of morality and immorality, and the discussed method outlines the steps to be made when evaluating moral concepts (Boghossian and Lindsay 246). Based on Plato’s works, the dialectic method used by Socrates has five stages, with “wonder” being the first one (Boghossian and Lindsay 246).

During this stage, a question for discussion is offered, and it usually refers to the definition of some abstract concept or its social importance (Boghossian and Lindsay 246). Then, the stage of a hypothesis takes place, and a philosopher provides his first answer to be evaluated and supported later.

The third step needed to implement the Socratic Method into practice can be regarded as the representation of the deep meaning and innovative nature of this approach to arguments. It is called the elenchus or the argument of refutation and involves a series of questions from the facilitator that highlight the answer’s potential flaws (Boghossian and Lindsay 246). Also, these questions are to point at the circumstances in which the hypothesis becomes inconclusive. After “surviving the elenctic process,” the answer does not necessarily become knowledge, but the elenchus allows checking its quality and defeasibility (Boghossian and Lindsay 246). Thus, a hypothesis can be accepted and become a new principle only if it cannot be disproved.

Next, the fourth stage depends on the outcomes of the elenchus. If the hypothesis has been destroyed, the process is to start again with a different answer to the same question. If it has not been undermined, it is necessary to end the conversation or introduce additional elenctic questions to make conclusions on the hypothesis (Boghossian and Lindsay 246). Finally, to implement the fifth stage, all participants are to revise their beliefs and apply new moral knowledge to their lives and actions.

The critical approach to evaluating other people’s views made Socrates the key contributor to Western philosophy. During the pre-Socratic period, prominent thinkers focused on retrieving the arche or the source of everything, but they did not have a system helping to assess hypotheses (Georgoulas 143; Kenny 24). The method used by Socrates changed the perception of arguments and laid the foundations for critical thinking in philosophy, thus replacing the previously used ways of confirming beliefs (Kenny 24). Also, the method was applicable to sensitive topics and principles to guide one’s life.

Due to that, Socrates contributed to the development of moral philosophy or a set of theories aimed at distinguishing between right and wrong actions (Kenny 25). Therefore, the willingness to take hypotheses critically to check if they present knowledge is among the key principles that made Socrates a great thinker of his time.

Socrates’s important contributions to Western philosophy also include his attempts to connect moral knowledge and wrongdoing. He believed that the willingness to commit harmful actions always stemmed from the absence of knowledge helping to evaluate intentions and their consequences (Kenny 25). According to this principle, all people want to live a happy life. They can do the wrong things only unintentionally, just because they have no idea what is right in some situations (Kenny 25). Consequently, they need instruction instead of punishment in order to understand their mistakes (Kenny 25). This idea contributed to the discussion of human nature and inspired other thinkers to offer their opinions on rationalism in ethics.

Mind, Body, and Preexistence

Apart from the mentioned concepts, Socrates facilitated further evolution of philosophy by offering a new perspective on physical and immaterial things related to human experience. During the pre-Socratic era, the distinction between the physical and non-physical components of living creatures did not receive much attention (Georgoulas 138). The philosopher being discussed was among the first thinkers to regard the soul and the body as two separate entities that are interconnected (Kenny 32). Based on his ideas, unlike the body, the human soul is immaterial and immortal (Kenny 32).

In the philosopher’s opinion, the soul presents the initial source of life and exists even before a person’s birth (Kenny 32). These ideas highlighted the superiority of the soul over the body and provided the basis for further discussions of life, death, and immortality in philosophy.

To sum it up, Socrates was a philosopher that used the approaches to thinking and evaluating arguments that were innovative at the time. Being a master of rhetoric and a talented warrior, he increased the perceived importance of critical thinking by applying the Socratic Method or the elenchus during conversations with his disciples. Together with the method, his ideas concerning morality and wrongdoing as a result of ignorance also changed the philosophy and set the path for its evolution.

Boghossian, Peter, and James Lindsay. “The Socratic Method, Defeasibility, and Doxastic Responsibility.” Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 50, no. 3, 2018, pp. 244-253.

D’Angour, Armand. Socrates in Love: The Making of a Philosopher. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

Georgoulas, Stratos. The Origins of Radical Criminology. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Kenny, Anthony. An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy. 20th ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2018.

Moore, Christopher. “Socrates and Self-Knowledge in Aristophanes’ Clouds.” The Classical Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 2, 2015, pp. 534-551.

Saxonhouse, Arlene W. “A Shameless Socrates on Trial in Democratic Athens.” Readings of Plato’s Apology of Socrates: Defending the Philosophical Life, edited by Vivil Valvik Haraldsen et al., Lexington Books, 2018, pp. 17-36.

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The Socratic Method: Fostering Critical Thinking
What is the Socratic Method?
Philosophy. The Socratic Method: What Is It?
How Socratic Dialogue Differs From Other Conversations
The Socratic Legacy or the Cynic Legacy
Socratic Knowledge of Ignorance vs. Descartes' Doubt
Plato’s “Parable of the Cave”: The Socratic Method
What is Socratic Method
Study of The Socratic Method
Information About Socrates: Analysis
John Locke and Adam Smith as English Philosophers
Outlining Aristotle's Ethics and Metaphysics
Socrates and His Methods
Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy of Knowledge and Judgement
The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

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4 Chapter 4: Foundational Philosophies of Education

socrates contribution to education essay

A philosophy is often defined as the foundation upon which knowledge is based. However, when you break apart the actual word, a much different meaning emerges. Derived from the Greek “philos,” which means love , and “sophos,” which means wisdom , the actual meaning of the word philosophy is love of wisdom (Johnson et. al., 2011).

In this chapter, we will explore how traditional philosophies have evolved over time by briefly looking at three key branches of philosophy. Then, the schools of philosophy and their influence on education will be presented. Finally, you will hear from educators in the field and see how they put their “philosophies” of education into practice.

Section I: Schools of Philosophy

4.1 Essential Questions

At the end of this section, the following essential questions will be answered:

What are the four   main schools of philosophy?
Who were the   key philosophers within each   school of   philosophy?
What are the key implications of   each school of philosophy  on education   today?

There are four broad schools of thought that reflect the key philosophies of education that we know today. These schools of thought are: Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism, and Existentialism. It is important to note that idealism and realism, otherwise known as general or world philosophies, have their roots in the work of the ancient Greek philosophers: Plato and Aristotle. Whereas pragmatism and existentialism are much more contemporary schools of thought.

It is important to study each school of thought because they shape the way we approach education today. Specifically, each school of thought directly impacts how curriculum is developed, implemented, and assessed.

Idealism is a school of philosophy that emphasizes that “ideas or concepts are the essence of all that is worth knowing” (Johnson et. al., 2011, p. 87). In other words, the only true reality is that of ideas. Based on the writings of Plato, this school of philosophy encourages conscious reasoning in the mind. Furthermore, idealists look for, and value, universal or absolute truths and ideas. Consequently, idealists believe that ideas should remain constant throughout the centuries.

Key Philosophers

Plato (ca. 427 –   ca. 347 BCE):

4.2 A Closer Look

How does the Allegory of the Cave give us insight into Plato’s conception of reality?
What are some other examples of “cave-like” thinking?
Do you agree with Plato’s premise? Why or why not?

Socrates (ca. 470 – ca. 399 BCE):

4.3 A Closer Look

In what ways does the Socratic Method actively engage students in the learning process?
Do you think this method improves students understanding?
How does this method promote higher-order thinking?
Elementary Example: Socratic Seminar Strategies for the Second Grade Classroom
Secondary Example: Scaffolding Discussion Skills with a Socratic Circle

Kant (1724 – 1804):

Educational Implications of Idealism

When translated to the classroom, teachers with an Idealist school of though would emphasize being role models of these absolute truths, ideas, and values. Curriculum would focus on broad ideas, particularly those contained in great works of literature and/or scriptures. Teaching methods used within idealism include: lecture, discussion, and Socratic dialogue. Essential to these teaching methods is posing questions that generate thoughts and spark connections.

Paul (n/d) suggests the following six types of Socratic questions:

How does this relate to our discussion?

What would be an example?
What is another way to look at it?
What are the consequences of that assumption?
What was the point of this question?

Realism is a school of   philosophy with origins in the work of Aristotle. This philosophy emphasizes that “reality, knowledge, and value exist independent of the human mind” (Johnson, 2011, p. 89). Realists argue for the use of the senses and scientific investigation in order to discover truth. The application of the scientific method also allows individuals to classify things into different groups based on their essential differences.

Aristotle (384 –   322 BCE):

4.4 A Closer Look

Scientific Method Clip

Locke (1632 – 1704):

John Locke believed in the tabula rasa, or blank tablet, view of the mind. According to this view, a child’s mind is a blank slate when they are born. All the sensory experiences they have after birth fill up the slate through the impressions that are made upon the mind.

4.5 A Closer Look

Do you agree with Locke’s claim that “at birth our minds are like a sheet of white paper?” Why or why not?
How is this idea more similar to “nature” vs. “nurture?”

Educational Implications of Realism

Within a realist educational philosophy, the curricular focus is on scientific research and development as Realists’ consider education a matter of reality rather than speculation. The teacher role is to teach students about the world they live in. Realists view the subject expert as the source and authority for determining the curriculum.

Outcomes of this thinking in classrooms today include the appearance of standardized tests, serialized textbooks, and specialized curriculum (Johnson et. al., 2011). Teaching methods used in realism include:

Critical thinking
Observation
Experimentation

Pragmatism is “a process  philosophy  that stresses evolving and  change rather than being” (Johnson et. al., 2011, p. 91). In other words, pragmatists believe that reality is constantly changing so we learn best through experience.

According to pragmatists, the learner is constantly conversing and being changed by the environment with whom he or she is interacting. There is “no absolute and unchanging truth, but rather, truth is what works” (Cohen, 1999, p.1). Based on what is learned at any point and time, the learner or the world in which he or she is interacting can be changed.

Peirce (1839 – 1914):

Charles Sanders Peirce is one of the first pragmatic thinkers. He introduced the pragmatic method in which students are supplied a procedure for constructing and clarifying meanings. In addition, this system helps to facilitate communication among students.

Dewey (1859 – 1952):

Dewey also believed that the application of the “scientific method” could solve an array of problems. He saw ideas as the instruments to solving problems and advocated for the application of the following steps to meet this goal:

Recognize that the problem exists.
Clearly define the problem.
Suggest possible solutions.
Consider the potential consequences of the possible solutions.
Carry out further observation and experiment leading to the solution’s acceptance or rejection. (Timm, 2020)

4.6 A Closer Look

What did the “new” or “Romantic” side believe about education? What did the “old” or “traditional” side believe about education? Which side(s) did Dewey lean toward and why?
What else did Dewey think we should take into account? Why is this so important to Dewey?
Why did Dewey want to connect education with society?
What is the question of education according to Dewey? Do you agree? Why or why not?

Educational Implications of Pragmatism

According to a Pragmatic school of thought, curriculum should be so planned in such a way that it teaches the learner how to think critically rather than what to think. Teaching should, therefore, be more exploratory in nature than explanatory. To promote this approach to teaching, students should be actively engaged in the learning process and be challenged to solve problems. The teachers job is to help support students learning by promoting questioning and problem-solving during the natural course of lesson delivery.

The curriculum is also interdisciplinary. Teaching methods used in pragmatism include:

Hands-on problem solving
Experimenting
Cooperative Learning

Existentialism

Existentialism is a school of philosophy   that “focuses on the  importance of the individual rather than on external standards” (Johnson et. al., 2011, p. 93). Existentialists believe that our reality is made up of nothing more than our lived experiences, therefore our final realities reside within each of us as individuals. As such,   the physical world has no real meaning outside our human   experience and there is no objective, authoritative truth about metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

Kierkegaard (1813-1855):

Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish minister and philosopher. He is

considered to be the founder of existentialism.

4.7 A Closer Look

Kierkegaard’s Philosophy

Nietzsche (1844-1900):

Friedrich Nietzcshe stressed the importance of the individuality of each person. According to Johnson et. al. (2011), his work provided a “strategy to liberate people from the oppression of feeling inferior within themselves, and a teaching of how not to judge what one is in relation to what one should be” (p. 95).

Educational Implications of Existentialism

Within an existentialist classroom, subject matter takes second place to helping the students understand and appreciate themselves for who they are as individuals. The teacher’s role is to help students accept individual responsibility for their personal thoughts, feelings, and actions. To do this, the teacher is responsible for creating an environment in which student may freely choose their own preferred way of learning by giving students latitude in their choice of subject matter.

Furthermore, answers come from within the individual in an existential classroom, not from the teacher. For this reason, Existentialists strongly oppose standardized assessments which measure or track student learning. Instead, they want the educational experience of the student to focus on creating opportunities for self-direction and self-actualization of the whole person, not just the mind (Cohen, 1999).

In an Existentialist classroom, curriculum is structured to provide students with experiences that will help unleash their own creativity and self-expression through an emphasis on teaching humanities. For example, rather than emphasizing historical events, existentialists focus upon the actions of historical individuals, each of whom provides possible models for the students’ own behavior. Math and science may be de-emphasized because their subject matter would be considered “cold,” “dry,” “objective,” and therefore less fruitful to self-awareness. In teaching art, existentialism encourages individual creativity and imagination more than copying and imitating established models.

As described above, Existentialist methods focus on the individual. Learning is self-paced, self directed, and includes a great deal of individual contact with the teacher, who relates to each student openly and honestly. Although elements of existentialism occasionally appear in public schools, this philosophy has found wider acceptance in private schools and in alternative public schools founded in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

4.8 A Closer Look

Now that you have learned about the four main schools of thought, let’s find out which one you most align to right now. In order to do this, you are going to take the quiz below. Note: Make sure to write down which school of thought you are based on your quiz results.

What school of thought were you?
Do you agree that you align with the school of thought identified by the quiz? Why or why not?
What are some specific implications for you as a future teacher given the school of thought you were identified as from the quiz?

Section II: Defining your own philosophy

4.9 Essential Questions

What is a philosophy?
What elements do you consider to be most important to include in your philosophy of education?
Think about the elements identified in this section, do you think all of them are essential to include when writing a philosophy of education? Why or why not?

As discussed in section one, there are   several key schools of thought that reflect key philosophies of education. In this section, we are going to look at the “definition” of a   philosophy. We will also explore the   importance of defining your own education philosophy as a future teacher. Finally, we will identify essential elements that should   be considered when writing your educational philosophy.

What is a Philosophy?

When asked to think about the following question, what comes to mind: What is a Philosophy?

Common responses   include:

• A set of beliefs

• A personal platform

• Our personal thoughts

A philosophy is indeed all of these things, and so much more! According to the New Oxford American Dictionary (2005), a philosophy is “the study of the fundamental nature of knowl- edge, reality, and existence” (p. 1278).

When it comes to our educational philosophy, Webb et. al. (2010) state that our “philosophy of education enables us to recognize certain educational principles that define our views about the learner, the teacher, and the school” (p. 50). As such, it critical to determine what school of thought you most align to as this will shape the way you see the students, curriculum and educational setting.

Articulating Your Philosophy of Education

When articulating your philosophy of education, it is   essential to reflect on the multiple dimension of teaching  that would impact your philosophy. As demonstrated by the diagram, there are a lot of factors to consider. Take a moment to reflect on the diagram, are there any elements you feel are more important than the others? Are there elements missing that you would include? If so, what are they and why do you feel they are important?

When approaching the writing of your philosophy of education, we recommend using the following key elements to ensure that your philosophy of education is well thought out and supported, no matter which school of thought it is based upon.

Why do you teach?
Why have you chosen to teach elementary,   secondary, or a particular content area?
What are your values as a teacher?
FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION
What philosophy of education do you MOST   align with and why (revisit Ch. 4 – Ch. 9 of   your iBook)?
How has education changed historically in the   last 50/60 years (revisit Ch. 2 & Ch. 3 of your iBook)?
What impact have movements like the civil   rights had on schools (revisit Ch. 2 of your   iBook)?
How have educational policies like NCLB   and the standardized testing movement   impacted educators and instructional decisions/programming?
In what ways has the increased diversity   in our educational settings impacted the   need for teachers to be prepared to address   the needs of linguistically and culturally   diverse students in their classrooms now   more than ever before?

3. UNDERSTANDING OF TEACHING AND   LEARNING

What approaches, methods, pedagogy do you   use and why and how are these influenced   by the philosophy you MOST aligned with  (revisit Ch. 4 – Ch. 9 of your iBook)?
Which elements of effective instruction do you   think are most important to apply to support   ALL students learning?
What strategies do you apply to actively engage   ALL your students throughout the lesson?
How do you motivate your students to learn?
How do you motivate yourself to be the teacher   your students need you to be?

4. CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT

How do you create a community of learners   (revisit Ch. 1 of your iBook)?
What is your “code of conduct” (revisit Ch. 1   of your iBook)?
How do you engage students to limit disruptions   and time off task?
If disruptions do occur, what do you do?

5. INCLUSIVENESS

Do you understand your own bias and how this   impacts your teaching (revisit Ch. 2 of your iBook)?
How are you effective with ALL students (revisit   Ch. 2 of your iBook)?
How do you create a culturally responsive class  room environment (revisit Ch. 1 of your iBook)?
How do you teach UNCONDITIONALLY so   that all your students get the best education   possible and you demonstrate respect for the   customs and beliefs of the diverse student groups   represented in your classroom?
What specific strategies do you use to support   diverse learners?
In what ways do you act as an advocate for your   students, their families, and the   community?

Take a moment to reflect on all the information   you read about educational philosophies. Your challenge is to write at least a one-page,   single-spaced philosophy of education paper  that summarizes your current philosophy of   education.

Section III: The importance of student voices

4.10 Essential Questions

By the end of this section, the following essential questions will be answered.

What can we learn from student voices?
What insights might you gain from the student quotes?
What did you learn from watching the video clips?
What links did you make between the what the speakers shared in the video clips and the different schools of thought discussed in this chapter?

To best understand the power of an educational philosophy in practice, this section is going to provide you with two different sets of evidence. The first set of evidence comes from KSU students. The second set comes from a student and two educators in the field. As you read and listen to the   information being shared, please reflect on the questions to consider. Although you do not need to document your responses to each of the questions, they have been provided to help you critical reflect on the information being presented.

4.11 Student Voices

“My philosophical belief is that I want to   prepare my children, not for the next grade or college;  but for their future in society through tools learned in   the classroom.” ASU16
“I feel that after studying several popular philosophies  of education my personal philosophy is a medley of all   of them, making it completely mine.” DP U16
“Every experience I have impacts the way I look at the   world and I will continue to strive to keep my teaching  the same while as the same time adapting to the needs of my students.” MLU16

4.12 A Closer Look

The following video provides and more in-depth look the importance of having a solid philosophy of education from a student’s point of view. As you watch this video, consider the following questions:

What insights did you gain from the video?
Based on the information shared, what school of thought(s) do you think influenced prior educational experiences of this student?
What school of thought do you think this student is   advocating for in the future? Why?

As demonstrated in the student voices, and video by Adora Avitak, being able to articulate your philosophy of education is essential as a future educator. For your philosophy of education shapes your delivery of academic content, but more importantly guides your beliefs when it comes to working with students. To learn more about the importance of how educators view students, let’s watch Rita Pierson.

4.7 A Closer Look

As you listen to Rita Pierson, consider the following questions:

Based on the information shared, what school of thought(s) do you think influence this teacher?
How might you apply what you learned from Rita Pierson to your own future practice?

Rita Pierson is such a powerful educator and advocate for students. I hope you learned a lot from her TedTalk! As we wrap up this chapter, I leave you with one final question: How will you be a champion for your future students?!

Media Attributions

Socrates Aristotle Shakespeare Flintstone © esmemes
Plato Quote © TraumaAndDissociation
Socrates Quote © obscuredreamer
Kant Quote © Butrous Foundation
Socratic Circle © Samantha Bush
Aristotle Quote © Mountaingoat Seventeen
Standardized Test © Alberto G.
Pragmatism Pic © Kristian Bjornard
Dewey Quote © PetiteFamily93
Existentialist Snoopy © Rob S
Kierkegaard Quote © Max Lagace
Nietzcshe Quote © SnD Quotes
Glass half full © Geralt
Thinking © GlobalUppal
My Philosophy of Education © Kelsey F. Hawkins

To the extent possible under law, Della Perez has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Social Foundations of K-12 Education , except where otherwise noted.

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Socrates' Life and Contributions to Philosophy Essay

1. early life and education.

Socrates' father, Sophroniscus, was a sculptor and his mother, Phaenarete, was a midwife. It is believed that he was born around 470 BCE, although the exact date is not known. Socrates lived through a period of immense cultural and intellectual achievements in Athens, which was then at war with other Greek city-states. Coming from a rather humble background, he received a typical ancient Greek education which was reserved for the sons of the wealthy, and was probably literate. Socrates was instructed in the Greek grammar, music and gymnastics by the Sophists. Also, he does claim that his true education - that is to say, his philosophical education - came when he began to question the various assumptions and claims made by the Sophists. In terms of philosophy in particular, Socrates is acknowledged as one of the most important figures. He had no more than a rather ordinary Greek education before he embarked on a career as a stonemason like his father. In many writings, it is said that "Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from the sky and established it in the towns and introduced ethics and argumentative, pugnacious, cross-examining ways - for now he was inquiring about 'matters', Good and Evil." Socrates shows a change in emphasis within philosophy from learning about the ways of the cosmos and nature, to learning about the possibilities for human life. This obviously is a reflection of the considerable change in the nature of Greek society. Great strides were being made in democracy at this time in Athens, so it is not coincidental that Socrates' new methods can be linked with the increasing value of argument and cross-examination through the emerging democratic process in Athens.

1.1. Birth and Family Background

Socrates was born in 470 BC in a flat or on the side of Mount Lycabettus, in the city of Athens, Greece. Although the exact details of his life and the world in which he lived are largely unknown, it is generally believed that Socrates was born to a stonemason and sculptor named Sophroniscus and his wife, a midwife, Phaenarete. Socrates had three brothers and a sister and he himself would go on to get married and have three sons. He was born into the world at a time when Athens was at its height as the cultural center of the Western celebes. This time came to be the Golden Age of Athens under the rule of the well-known statesman Pericles. This was a time of great social and cultural growth and it was in this atmosphere that Socrates would be raised by his parents and taught the skills of his father's trade in sculpture. However, the formal education of Socrates was in the most traditional of style, following the cultural and ideology of his time. As a young boy in his teens, he was given education in the field of Acrobatics and Music. This does not refer to physical acrobatics but instead the teaching of value and teaching of personal character. It was important to impress not only the outdoor strength and agility but also the mental and moral virtues as well as aesthetics. However, what was most important in the development of a young Athenian male as saw by Socrates' day was in the learning of Music, which was the study of the works of someone such as Homer and Socrates. His father was quite old - Socrates was probably his father's late-life child, and there was much about his life that Socrates would learn as he went along. However, his father was involved in the training of him in the ways of a thinker and believed that in addition to following in the family's profession of stonemasonry and sculpture, the young boy should receive a formal education of someone like himself. He therefore gave Socrates over to the study of a gentleman who was well respected in the intellectual community. This gentleman's name was Anaxagoras and though he was considered radical in his day, he was very well respected and looked up to. Under Anaxagoras' tutoring, Socrates received what was the most contemporary of scientific and philosophical education in the world at that time. He learned science and mathematics, as well as the works of the philosophers' predecessors in the likes of Ionian philosophers. He was taught in the idea of Mind and rational order and he became very vested in finding philosophical solutions to problems in a rational fashion. The belief that rational mind must be brought to bear on the problems presented to one became the fundamental structure and foundation for the development of the Socratic Method, which is one of the revolutionary and historical elements of Socrates' works and thinking. Socrates' study and work in those areas led him to consider far-reaching questions and made him well acquainted with thinking and making discoveries on his own. His education opened up new vistas for him and to the world and thus changed the course of his life and the world of philosophy forever. With the educational years finished, Socrates took up the study of the works of the well-known natural philosopher of the time, one who went by the name of Parmênides, in the hopes of mastering the theory of natural philosophy and putting to rest the almost constant chasing after the matter that seemed to occupy the work of philosopher Heraclitus: that of the simple changeability and lack of perfection in the physical world. However, Socrates decided to abandon this formalized and specific study and sought to cease the works of others in order to also make new discoveries of his own that followed the Method in which he had developed through Anaxagoras. His family's patron was Apollo and according to the Pythia, Socrates was the wisest man. This belief from the great oracle was not just a moment of irrational attention but gives us the sentiment of Socrates' wisdom and beginnings of his real and important influences on the community and his followers.

1.2. Education and Influences

Socratic education and learning is distinct from that of many other ancient philosophers, in that he was never attracted to explore the physical world, and he was not interested in the ethical developments of the society in which he lived. He didn't analyze grammar, rhetoric or poetry, and he never created an organized idea. Instead, he involved his own education in his own personal improvement, establishing values that still remain that most of us believe in today, such as self-questioning and honesty. His last major interest lay in specific different questions concerning ethics and the good life; specifically, the problems posed by the extent of human ignorance and the solidity of thought. This is what separated him from the sophists: his work was not about finding the 'right answer' or persuading people so they can win arguments, but to pursue the 'right question' - To Socrates, simply by asking questions, human beings could be developed and find the road to knowledge.

1.3. Early Philosophical Development

In his early philosophical journey, Socrates was heavily influenced by the two main figures in the city at the time: the stonemason and his father, Sophroniscus. It is known that his father must have been a good influence on the young Socrates, as he himself became a well-respected stonemason. However, we have very little evidence of his father's teachings and influence on Socrates due to the lack of information about his father. In contrast, we know quite a lot about the impact of the stonemason. For example, the stonemason used to work with ores, such as marble, and these are minerals which occur naturally. Using these minerals and observing the perfect geometric shapes that can be made from them, the stonemason built influences of Pythagorean and Presocratic theories in Socrates' early philosophical understanding. The early exposure to these philosophical ideas may have helped lay the foundations for his later ideas and theories, such as the theory that learning is just a form of recollection. Also, another theory was that true knowledge is in knowing that you know nothing - a theory that Socrates is often remembered by - and because the stonemason lived a simple life and had no desires for wealth or fame. Socrates may have been influenced by his simple lifestyle and took inspiration from it, adopting a lifestyle of self-control and neglecting the world to the pursuit of true knowledge. This would explain Socrates' lack of interest in richness and well-being; a very frequent attachment within society at the time, in contrast to the aforementioned simplicity and unrecognized intellectual pursuit that Socrates carried out. Many historians and writers have claimed that Socrates' dedication to his true knowledge and looking down upon from ordinary people with their materialistic lives eventually led to his trial and execution of being impiety. This is because his life seems to oppose the life of the common people - who prefer power, comfort and wealth - and turning them into a target of mockery when frequently questioning their beliefs and moral values. The theories he developed because of the influence by the stonemason soon turned into Socrates' own personal way of understanding the world, now famously known as the Socratic Paradox. He would constantly question other people's beliefs and moral values, yet provide no answers and remain nondogmatic, implying that he himself has no knowledge, therefore he does not have an answer to what is being asked. He taught unlike other philosophers at the time, and was the first philosopher to develop such a unique method of forming new ideas based on the exchange of reasoned arguments and considered criticisms amongst others - this is what he is famously remembered by in the philosophy world, the Socratic Method.

2. Socratic Method and Philosophy

The Socratic method is a way of philosophical inquiry that was popularized by Socrates. It was first described by Plato in the Socratic Dialogues. To understand why Socrates created and engaged in the Socratic method, it is important to recognize his underlying purpose. Socrates was displeased with the Sophists who promised much, delivered little, and injured those who were under their charge. In contrast to this, the Socratic method aims to prove the ignorance of someone in a specific field, not to show that the other person's claims are false. This method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions. It was designed to force one to examine their beliefs and the validity of such beliefs. By asking an interlocutor the initial question: "What is 'Piety'?", Socrates begins to show the fundamental aspect of the Socratic method. Through a series of masterfully worded questions, Socrates is able to show that the answer reached by Euthyphro is actually incorrect, and contradiction is reached as a result. Socratic questioning and the Socratic method is also based on the idea that we all desire knowledge and we will act according to such desires. Every virtue, in the final analysis, is a form of knowledge; because virtue, traditionally understood as the shaping of passions, emotions, and desires, always requires thought - both in the highest sense of knowledge related to wisdom and also in terms of everyday judgments about happiness and good life. Every single thing that Socrates says, he appears to know everything about, and yet claims to know nothing. This is because he knows that he cannot possibly possess knowledge of his subject without first learning what his subjects assumed knowledge is, and in turn that knowledge of the assumed knowledge. And as he questions, he claims to be unteachable. This apparent contradiction is dissolved with the understanding that although it appears to be Socrates as teacher, it is the interlocutor that is directing the content parceled to him and at his speed of learning. His statements are often used as part of an argument, in order to strengthen a conclusion or to weaken an underlying claim. By placing particular statements in their proper position within his argument, one may discover how Socrates arrives at the conclusion at which he arrives. However, unlike many philosophers, although he does provide statements and conclusions in this manner, he often leads one to question the framework on which the conclusion is drawn, the validity of the evidence used, and the rationality of the proponent of the argument. His statements are used to directly question, and to examine his opponent and the opponent's opinion, so that from the very first question that he poses, to the exposition of his philosophical rhetoric, one may rightly say that Socrates' every word is used in the Socratic method. He truly speaks through the method, and it through the method that we can understand Socrates and his underlying intentions for those beliefs that we credit to him.

2.1. Definition and Characteristics of the Socratic Method

As indicated in the table of contents for the assignment, the Socratic Method is in use throughout the entire book. It opens with an exploration of what the Socratic Method is in practice and ends with a record of some good fortune in education involving this teaching. The method is presented by example of how Socrates himself, while a teacher, taught professionals to use Socratic questioning in order to lead students to a deeper and more complex understanding. This animated and assertive form of questioning is becoming a more popular assessment technique as we move away from discounts on standardized examinations of student learning. The excerpts in "The Socratic Method: Jones Falls University" have shown the evolution of the teacher from initial skepticism to final consent of the power and impact of the method. It begins with the ignorance and hesitation that Marta feels when she is introduced to the new method in "The Professor: First Week of December". This could well be in response to the assertions of others on the knowledge acquired through interactions with Socratic questioning. For example, Richard in "Seminar Four: England, Three Months Later" is neither hesitant nor unsure of the potential successes of the method and seeks his own affirmations and confirmations from educators. A.D. Williams has written that Socrates would lead his interlocutor from one statement to another until they contradicted themselves. He would continually question them until they realized that they no longer had a consistent view. Thus, the main character who carries the purpose and importance of the method is Socrates. It appears to me that he is always providing the motivations and driving the new learning. Once the new teaching style is in flow and the teacher gets used to the method, the students will then be well guided under the umbrella of Socratic questioning.

2.2. Importance of Dialogue and Questioning

Socrates utilized his dialectical method of quizzing to clear the road for its viewers to particular insights. He utilized the method in order to expose pretension, to lead his followers to undeniable fact and give his focus to reliable responses in which will stand up to crucial examination. For Socrates, philosophy is certainly not merely a relaxation of eyesight or a mental physical exercise, nor is it a question of knowing historic specifics. Socrates thought that philosophy should accomplish practical effects for the improved well-being of community. The practical work outcomes from a procedure in which doubt, basic to vital considering, tests even our most ground and cherished morals. Such examination will be carried out by Socrates' method of penetrating imagined in either/or or both refutation/affirmation (what he called Elenctic/Socratic technique) and in continuous and unguided request for sides and decisions, findings and proof (what is referred to as elenchus). All his abilities of mental evaluation had been separate resources established in his vigorous accept the spiritualized rationalism of his time and the knowledge to look for ultimate meanings and all-inclusive methods even from what could possibly appear as primary knowledge. The skill to question and strategy the response not in an achievement of steps, varied although they could possibly be, but the truth of the much better and finally of the best of all probable examines; this is what Socratic method is aimed at. It is in the living community of conversation and thought that these techniques are to find their perfect software. Socrates himself needs by no means have attempted any complete system and also allows that, given distinct material, distinct features will be specified. He envisioned however that this practices - both the method and the use of the remedy - could accurately and validly be presented to any morality and in a path of specialized studies. Creative imagination in learning and the progress of new hypotheses that fuse and assistance knowledge recommended is exactly what Socrates sees as demonstrating "the individual power fulfilling by itself in the helpful interconnection of every single methodologic piece" and utilized in the lambent lumination of the inmost personal. By criticisms, in Socratic method, as inventive method, Socrates constructs a practical method not only of teaching us how to philosophize, but also of major us to a recognition of our own continual capabilities. He portrays for us the aesthetic glance in which this kind of abilities might be keenly brought to concentrate in the utter hope of finding by our means as part of an organic and natural whole a place for everything and everything in its place.

2.3. Socrates' Views on Knowledge and Wisdom

Socrates believed that all people possess some kind of knowledge. However, he also held that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for human beings to possess or achieve the kind of knowledge that would provide insight into the proper courses of action in life. Socrates distinguished between what he called "human wisdom" and "divine wisdom". Human wisdom is the knowledge of one's own ignorance. Socrates contrasts this with divine wisdom, which is the knowledge of the gods and the mysteries of the universe. He explains that human wisdom is the only kind of knowledge we can have. In other words, he is claiming that, although we can never truly know anything, we all believe that we have knowledge. And we conduct our lives accordingly. We make choices based on our beliefs, such as what will benefit us and what will harm us. So, Socrates believes that, since we do not possess divine wisdom that would allow us to make perfect choices, human wisdom is the only kind of wisdom we can have. His views on the limitation of human knowledge and the connection between knowledge and human virtue is a very important and consistent theme in his philosophy. By always pressing for a definition for morality and good life, or by examining the nature of justice and virtue, Socrates attempted to show that real wisdom is the active and conscious maintenance of well-being for a human being. He believed that wisdom is a condition of both moral and intellectual well-being, and that it is something to be sought and desired for its own sake. He was convinced that a life directed by such wisdom was the best possible life. And the cultivation of this kind of wisdom is a way to keep the city and all its citizens in good order. This is a way to fulfill his moral obligation to the city and to his fellow human beings. Various passages in "Apology" and "Euthyphro" have led scholars to question that did the real Socrates have moral standard and method, and if so, was he sincere about his moral duty? Also, were his teachings consistent and meaningful since he claimed his knowledge is limited? To find out answers to these questions, it is crucial to examine his other dialogues and further explore his philosophical beliefs.

3. Trial and Legacy

Socrates was brought to trial on the charge of impiety, a serious crime that could result in the death penalty. Socrates' prosecution was presented by Anytus, a man from a wealthy family and with strong political influence in Athens. Anytus accused Socrates of corrupting the youth and of impiety, that is, disbelief in the Athenian gods. Socrates' trial took place in the People's Court, the main political and judicial assembly in Athens. The trial was comprised of two parts: the presentation of the prosecutor's case and a debate between the accuser and the defendant. Anytus tried to keep the rhetoric of his speech at a high level so that he could persuade the jury that his accusations had to be taken seriously. However, Socrates, when he made his speech, adopted a much more direct and questioning approach. In the debate section, Socrates cross-examined randomly selected members of the jury, in order to ridicule and discredit their levels of knowledge and awareness. As was common practice in Athenian legal processes, the jury in Socrates' trial would consist of citizens from the population. By making these citizens feel that they were not as knowledgeable as they believed, Socrates posed a real threat to the success of Anytus' prosecution. Socrates was found guilty by a narrow margin and subsequently sentenced to death. Such a punishment was designed to publicly humiliate Socrates, because execution was normally reserved for those who committed more serious criminal offences, such as murder or treason. By sentencing Socrates to death, the court, and the Athenian government, aimed to label him as a dangerous subversive and to lessen the impact of his teachings on the population. After his death, Plato carried on Socrates' philosophical teachings and legacy through his writings. By founding the Academy in Athens, Plato created the first formal institution for philosophical research and development in Europe. Due to the influence of the Academy on modern philosophical methods, such as analysis and the study of cause and effect, Socrates can be seen as the grandfather of education and science as well as a key contributor to Western Philosophy.

3.1. Accusations and Trial of Socrates

Plato and Xenophon, his close followers, offer detailed accounts of Socrates' life and they provide the earliest surviving sources where we can find some information about his accusers and the charges made against him. There were two rounds of accusations against him. The two men who stood out as his most prominent accusers in the first round were Anytus, a politician, and Meletus, a poet. They blamed Socrates for not recognizing the gods that the city recognized and introducing new gods, but also for corrupting the youth. The second round of accusations was more intense than the previous one. According to Xenophon, the number of Socrates' accusers doubled and many of them were young and ambitious survivors of the Peloponnesian War. Socrates eventually was found guilty and was given a chance to propose his own punishment. He deliberately proposed an unreasonably mild penalty in order to provoke the jury to give him a harsher punishment, such as free meals for life in the Prytaneum. Consequently, the jurors who thought Socrates' modest request had attributed to his arrogance but were still willing to acquiesce; in turn, his trust for the rational faculty and public's in general has been confirmed when the jury did not agree to his proposition and voted for the capital penalty. He was given poison and then he passed away with a peaceful and composed manner. It was mainly the corrupt statesman who was afraid of dealing with a non-conventional figure like Socrates that led to his trial, according to his defender Lysias. On the surface, the accusations brought against Socrates were the direct causes that led to the trial and the jury's ultimate decision; however, what remains hidden under the hostility and enmity was the deeply entrenched political antagonism and chaos within the democratic society itself. The death of Socrates has been interpreted in different ways and that has been the ground for many controversies. However, one salient and undisputable fact had drawn the attention of his legacy: the philosophers' engagement with the society and the conflict between the philosophical life and the political life.

3.2. Impact and Influence of Socrates' Death

Socrates' death had a profound influence on the development of philosophy in the decades and centuries to follow. Initially, the students and followers of Socrates scattered and did not continue their work in a systematic way. Plato, who had witnessed the trial and the death of Socrates, left Athens as he became disillusioned with the city's political and social situation. Even though Plato recorded the trial and the death of Socrates, he never attempted to write any explicit account of the execution of Socrates in any of his dialogues. This seems to suggest that Plato was yet to find a dramatic and quite philosophical expression for this tragic event. On the other hand, Xenophon, who was also a contemporary historian, recorded the trial and the death of Socrates in a concise way. Xenophon's "Apology of Socrates to the Jury" and "Death Scene of Socrates" are two short accounts of the great philosopher's final days. On the impact of Socrates' death as far as the developments in the Hellenistic and Roman eras are concerned, there were a number of philosophical schools of thought, namely the major schools such as Plato's Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum, Zeno's Stoa and Epicurus' Garden. These schools of thought contributed to the rise of learning and the teaching of philosophy as a subject of study in the ancient world. Socrates' death appeared to awaken a new and vigorous spirit of philosophy in his younger contemporaries. For instance, the idea that philosophy is mainly about careful thinking and reasoning which will then lead to a well examined and fulfilling life was inherited by Plato. Moreover, in the modern era, the martyrdom story of Socrates played a crucial role in the social and political developments of the western world. Socrates remained a stronghold of those who yearned for a better society. For example, Mahatma Gandhi, a non-violent political activist for Indian independence and the pioneer of 'Satyagraha' (resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience), cited Socrates as one of the three 'saints' who inspired his life, the other two being Jesus Christ and F. B. I. inundable. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior arguably the most important leader of the American civil rights movement of the 20th century, was also inspired by Socrates and it is used as an integration of Socratic questioning into Dr. King's teachings. This demonstrates the enduring beliefs and values of meaningful and deep-seated moral and personal inquiry inspired by the fearless life and the heroic death of the great Socrates. These have also shown that the trial and the death of Socrates have had a huge impact in the modern society. For instance, the current understanding of the judicial system that every individual should be treated in a fair and just manner and should be given the opportunity to prove his or her innocence was developed from the way Socrates was judged and condemned to his death because of his beliefs.

3.3. Socrates' Legacy in Western Philosophy

Socrates' influence in Western philosophy extends to very diverse areas. In one sense, the whole history of philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, who in turn is a gratuitous component in the extensive dialectical method invented by his teacher. In the estimation of some contemporary scholars, Socrates may also be credited with founding political philosophy. He established once and for all that the correct purpose of human reason is the decision between less and more essential moral and political actions by providing a picture, through his own ethical character, of what such a life can be. This particular spirit of inquiry, neither subordinated to narrow technical competence nor numbed by the drumbeat of practical political necessity, is what characterizes the study of political philosophy even in our own tumultuous age. When considering the role of Socrates' teaching and philosophical methods in creating this legacy, the historian has a somewhat easier task, because of the highly distinctive personality of his two most important students, Plato and Xenophon. Ignoring at his own risk the various complicating factors introduced by Aristotle and Antisthenes, the fact remains traces are often identifiable between philosophical positions within the great stores of knowledge left to us by these men and different forms of the methods and message of their esteemed teacher.

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Plato pp 41–53 Cite as

The Socratic Method: Plato’s Legacy in Pedagogy

Avi I. Mintz 2
First Online: 09 March 2018

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Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Education ((BRIEFSKEY))

Many contemporary teachers claim to employ the “Socratic method” in their classrooms. But what exactly is deemed “Socratic” in teaching today? And how does today’s Socratic teacher compare to the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues?

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The necessity of human interaction in “Socratic” teaching was not overlooked by some (Broudy and Palmer 1965, p. 45; Jordan 1963).

See Mertz (2007 pp. 26–28) for an overview of criticism of Socratic teaching practices in legal education.

The authors answer the question “What is the Socratic method?” as follows: “It is an exercise in ‘reflective thinking’ that, according to John Dewey has two elements: doubt —a problem about meaning which initiates it—and an act of searching for a solution(s) to solve that problem” (Moeller and Moeller 2014b, p. 10; emphasis in original).

Wilberding (2014) is an exception in that he devotes considerable attention to Plato and Xenophon, and furthermore, is unique in that he advocates teaching the students about Socrates and his method before one uses Socratic teaching in the classroom (pp. 69–87).

Responding to particular individuals in particular ways is also a feature of Xenophon’s Socratic dialogues. See Morrison (1994) and Mintz (2010, pp. 288–289).

In Theaetetus , Socrates suggests that one view of teaching is when someone “has under his control pieces of knowledge,” he “teaches” when he “hands them over to others” and “learning” is when a person “gests them handed over to him” (Tht. 198b). This definition of teaching is consistent with other Socratic pronouncements in the Platonic corpus but one should be cautious because (a) this model is deemed unsatisfactory in terms of its ability to explain knowledge in Theaetetus and (b) it occurs in the same dialogue in which Socrates provides the midwife metaphor for his educational interactions.

Elsewhere (Mintz 2014) I have noted that such a solution is not so simple because Plato could have, like Xenophon, simply said that Socrates teaches without payment or reward. Xenophon’s Socrates says that he benefitted people “by teaching them, without reward [ proika didaskōn ], every good thing that lay in my power” (Xen. Soc. 26). In that essay, I also give an overview of some of the other scholarly positions on Socrates’ denial of teaching.

It would be an oversimplification, however, to say that all sophists had such base motives and goals. In the Platonic corpus, this seems true of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, but not of Hippias, Prodicus, Gorgias and Protagoras who were serious intellectuals and must have been dedicated, even inspiring teachers; that must surely account for at least some of their popularity, regardless of the vast sums they accumulated from the young men eager to use their lessons for their own personal gain.

See Chap. 3 on the inextricable link between philosophy and education in the Platonic corpus.

Plato emphasizes that Socrates confronts the leaders of both the oligarchy and the democracy (Ap.32b–e; Ltr. 7.324e–325a, 325c).

That being refuted is of value is mentioned in several places in the Platonic corpus. For example, Socrates tells Theaetetus after refuting his attempts to define knowledge, “if ever in the future you should attempt to conceive or should succeed in conceiving other theories, they will be better ones as the result of this enquiry. And if you remain barren, your companions will find you gentler and less tiresome; you will be modest and not think you know what you don’t know. This is all my art can achieve—nothing more” (Tht. 351b–c). Plato places one of his most eloquent articulations of this principle in Sophist when the Eleatic visitor describes refutation, with Socrates looking on, as an aspect of “noble sophistry” (Sph. 231b). The visitor says that “refutation is the principal and most important kind of cleansing” (230d) and refutation is beneficial because the “people who are being examined see this, get angry at themselves, and become calmer toward others. They lose their inflated and rigid beliefs about themselves that way, and no loss is pleasanter to hear or has a more lasting effect on them” (230b–c).

Scholars of Socratic pedagogy have failed to reckon with the Socrates’ myth-telling because most of the work on Socratic method has been conducted under the framework of a developmentalist theory of Plato’s corpus. The developmentalist theory posits that, early in his career, Plato’s dialogues are typically aporetic and present something very close to the historical Socrates. As Plato matured, Socrates became, in his “middle” dialogues, a mere spokesman for Platonic dogmatism. In his “late” dialogues, Plato moves beyond Socrates and increasingly uses other spokesmen for his views. Many who were interested in Plato’s Socrates as educator have seen fit to focus exclusively on a limited set of “early” dialogues (e.g. Teloh 1986).

Developmentalism has increasingly lost its influence among Plato scholars. Even those who once confidently declared particular dialogues a moment in Plato’s own intellectual development now caution that they are working within a particular theoretical framework that remains compelling. For my part, I find developmentalism to be a hindrance to thinking about Plato’s educational philosophy. Developmentalism has until recently been an obstacle to recognizing Plato’s profound educational undertaking in his use of the dialogue form of writing, and the best scholars on the readers’ education via Plato’s dialogues focus instead on the reading order of the corpus rather than theories of publication dates (Altman 2010, 2012, 2016a, 2016b; Cotton 2014). In the developmentalist paradigm, Plato simply changed his views over time, and those views are reflected straightforwardly in what Socrates says. But Plato’s Socrates as educator is a complex character, provoking his interlocutors into reflection (and, at times, self-recrimination). As an educator, Socrates does not simply state what he thinks via questions but, instead, carefully engages interlocutors, just as Plato in turn engages his readers.

Notably, Socrates says that the myth in Gorgias is a logos , an account, rather than a myth, an “old wives’ tale” (527a), whereas in Republic it is simply called a myth (R. 614b).

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Mintz, A.I. (2018). The Socratic Method: Plato’s Legacy in Pedagogy. In: Plato. SpringerBriefs in Education(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75898-5_5

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Plato: His 3 Greatest Contributions To Education

Of all the world’s greatest educated minds few are as well known as Plato. Living in 3rd century BC Plato is one of the most cited minds of all time. However it is his impact upon education for which he is most remembered today.

Over the course of his life Plato would have 3 major contributions to education. First, Plato in his book Republic Plato outlines how society should prioritize education. Second, Plato built the world’s first modern university. Third, Plato established the theory of epistemology which all modern education is based around.

Because of Plato the world’s education system would forever be changed. Today many of the worlds most highly educated see Plato as the father of knowledge.

Here at The History Ace I strive to publish the best history articles on the internet. If at the end you liked this content then feel free to sign up for the free newsletter and share around.

Without further ado, here are Plato’s 3 greatest contributions to education.

Plato’s Republic Established The Importance Of Education Within Society

One of the greatest contributions of Plato to the world’s education system was his book Republic .

Republic is a book where Plato’s teacher Socrates talks with different types of people in 4th century Athens. Using dialogue between Socrates and various people Plato demonstrates how a proper society should be created.

Plato highlights various types of political and societal theories but his greatest and most impactful is his concept of education. Plato positions education as the most important thing that a state should have.

Within the Republic Plato demonstrates how only the most educated of society are equipped to guide the state as a whole.

This profoundly impacted the development of society in the west. For almost 1,600 years the concept of education has impacted the development of nations and political groups.

It is because of Plato that modern leaders are encouraged to obtain higher levels of education. This concept of merit by education was established with Plato.

Today billions of people worldwide strive everyday to make themselves more educated by reading and attending school. Becoming educated is seen as one of the greatest things a person can accomplish.

Simply put, the place of education within society was established because of Plato.

Plato Built The World’s First University

Another one of Plato’s greatest contributions to education was his establishment of the world’s first university.

In order to guide the state Plato would build the world’s first institute of higher education just north of Athens. Plato called the world’s first university The Academy .

Plato’s Academy was named after the Greek hero Academus who saved the city of Athens by tricking the Spartan’s into pursuing Helen of Troy instead of sacking the city.

Because of this trickery Academus was seen as one of the greatest minds in Athens who saved the city through education alone. A perfect role model for Plato’s institute of higher education.

To Plato the world’s first university of higher education was going to create some of the greatest minds who would save Athens in the future. Some of the greatest academics who ever lived came out of this academy. One such example is Aristotle .

The world’s first university would go on to create a tradition of higher education. All over the world universities, colleges, and places of higher education all stem from this one 3rd century BC school.

Plato Established The Concept of Epistemology Which All Modern Education Is Based Around

One of the greatest contributions of Plato to the modern education system was his concept of epistemology .

Epistemology is the study of how knowledge transfers across cultures, time, and through education systems. For example, Plato teachings in the 3rd century BC can be read today. That concept of the flow of knowledge is epistemology.

Before Plato there was no serious discussion on how knowledge would flow from one generation to the next. This inherently prevented large scale education systems from being created.

Plato’s greatest contribution to the modern education system was the study of how to efficiently generate and distribute knowledge across a society. From this we get the concept of Platonic epistemology .

Plato’s version of epistemology is that nature holds all knowledge and that man must strive to understand it. Those opinions are merely shifting world views of this knowledge. Plato’s version of knowledge is absolute truth.

From this Platonic epistemology we get the greatest thing about our modern education system, the concept of dialogue between educated minds.

All modern academic conferences strive to give great academics the ability to discuss their findings with each other. This epistemological exchange remains one of the greatest contributions of Plato to our modern education system.

Simply put, without Plato’s theories of how to efficiently distribute knowledge it’s doubtful that society would look the same it does today. Educational systems such as schools and universities would simply not exist in their current form.

Those are Plato’s 3 greatest contributions to our modern day education system.

Plato would spend his entire life teaching people across the Mediterranean. Significant modern scholarship has looked at how much Plato has impacted our modern education systems. Any prospective graduate students interested in Plato will find a lot of material on him.

Thank you for reading this article. Here at The History Ace I strive to publish the best history articles on the internet. If you enjoyed this then consider subscribing and sharing around the internet.

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Socrates' Life and Contributions to Philosophy Essay

1.1. Birth and Family Background

1.2. Education and Influences

1.3. Early Philosophical Development

2. Socratic Method and Philosophy

2.1. Definition and Characteristics of the Socratic Method

2.2. Importance of Dialogue and Questioning

2.3. Socrates' Views on Knowledge and Wisdom

3. Trial and Legacy

3.1. Accusations and Trial of Socrates

3.2. Impact and Influence of Socrates' Death

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Plato: His 3 Greatest Contributions To Education

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