Blog 4 - Socrates and Education

 

Socrates describes in Book 7 that education is 'a turn around of the soul'. How do you think education today would look different if this was the guiding idea?

I think that the greatest point that Socrates makes in the book is that students are not a clean piece of paper that is meant to be filled with concepts and ideas of the world. The view of education in the book is an activity to re-route the knowledge students have already and to focus our minds on more important aspects of our existence.

I think that if schools in America had this approach we would be less focused on evaluation and providing more importance to students. We would consider students as complete human beings with the capacity to analyze and comprehend almost at the same level as adults. In my personal experience as a teacher in the past, I always felt that I was learning more from my students than what they were learning from me. 

I taught English grammar to children who were 6 or 7 years old, who spoke Spanish as their native tongue. Many mechanisms that we use in the development of our own native tongue are also applicable to how we learn a foreign language. For them, many of the things I taught were ideas that were already ingrained and that just needed to be re-routed to the English language. 

I think that education would be completely different if we started to provide more credit to children and treat adolescents (who based on their name lack something) more like adults. I believe that by giving students an idea of maturity, they slowly become mature on their own and they also develop the confidence to dare and learn more.

There is another issue with Education in my opinion with the general public. Some people prefer to be in the cave because thinking and analyzing are always the hardest part. I am afraid that many people could have the resources, and capacity to engage in education not only because it allows them to have more opportunities in life but also by learning we become better people (we care more for others, etc.) But many people out there believe that being educated is a sign of *feeling superior* to other people and therefore they either ridicule others for their efforts to study or block their own children's capacity to do so.

It is funny because that is just exactly what the people in the cave do to the one who runs away and returns. If you have achieved a degree of knowledge that feels slightly superior to others, people will start calling you an overachiever with a negative tone. This is in fact really sad because our world needs more people that know different aspects of life, and schools sometimes provide this *social learning* that is so urgent and necessary for our society today.

I think that our society feels pretty much like the boat story in Book 6. We all want to pilot it, we all think we have the skills but people are barely paying attention to the boat that is actually sinking before their eyes.

What else is wrong in education today?

I also reflect on the kind of person society wants to build today. I understand that from the point of view of the book; Socrates wants a ruler for his city who is both a hero and a philosopher. Someone who understands struggle but who is prepared to take the throne in case it is needed and someone who is not interested in power, but who will use the power for the sake of society.

I think that the kind of person our societies are trying to build is a person that is meant to thrive and satisfy its own individual needs and not the needs of the whole. It is wrong to teach individualism and personal success when in fact it is clear that when society is damaged we are all damaged at the same time. The pandemic is proof of this, it started with a disease in China, and we cared little because it was people (just like us) being sick in a country far from us. 

I think that education has a huge challenge to create individuals that are capable of understanding that when there is a human crisis somewhere else in the world there is a butterfly effect that no sooner than later will affect our own life.

I also dislike very much the extreme confidence given to screen time as a main source of education. With the pandemic, many of us have no choice but to go into online environments to complete our degrees but I think about children nowadays, and I fear that my own experience as a child of running around, jumping, hiding, negotiating toys, jumping in the dirt, and touching trees would be something children from the future will no longer experience.

There are many aspects of the human experience that cannot be limited to our computers and desks. I really hope the government finds a more hybrid model in which children are asked to complement their tasks online with physical / in-nature experiences. I would love to see community kindergartens where children can play with their neighbors without any concern about getting sick.

Are there any radical changes you would like to see in education today and why?

I think the most radical change I would love to see is to decrease individualism in American culture and American education. I never understood why teachers and parents want to make the child think that they are 'unique and special' and that this concept is more important than the concept of 'you know you are one child among many, and there is a lot of suffering and pain out there'.

I think when children are taught at an earlier age about 'other people's suffering' they grow to become more caring and loving individuals. And that is the kind of things I will teach my children one day.