SpringerBriefs in Education Key Thinkers in Education Series editor Paul Gibbs, London, UK This briefs series publishes compact (50 to 125 pages) refereed monographs under the editorial supervision of the Advisory Editor, Professor Paul Gibbs, Middlesex University, Nicosia, Cyprus. Each volume in the series provides a concise introduction to the life and work of a key thinker in education and allows readers to get acquainted with their major contributions to educational theory and/or practice in a fast and easy way. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10197 Avi I. Mintz Plato Images, Aims, and Practices of Education 123 Avi I. Mintz Department of Education The University of Tulsa Tulsa, OK USA ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Education ISSN 2211-937X ISSN 2211-9388 (electronic) SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education ISBN 978-3-319-75897-8 ISBN 978-3-319-75898-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75898-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933017 © The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Preface Whereas all writers of books for a general readership must balance the need to present ideas clearly while providing sufficient context, the author of a book on Plato’s educational thought faces a particular challenge: Plato wrote dialogues rather than treatises. Despite the fact that many readers confidently identify Plato’s doctrines of education, Plato declined to present his views systematically or straightforwardly. Instead, he composed dramatic, philosophical conversations that feature characters in various places and historical contexts. Even in antiquity, some cautioned Plato’s readers against declaring that they identified Plato’s doctrines. As one story goes, nearing death, Plato dreamt that he became a swan and flew from tree to tree to cause trouble for the birdcatchers. The philosopher Simmias said that this dream showed that readers of Plato, like the birdcatchers, would fail to grasp Plato’s intent because his words could be interpreted in different ways (Olym. 2.156-162). With this caution in mind, what might be responsibly said about Plato’s educational thought? Fortunately, I believe, quite a bit. Plato’s engagement with education was central to his life. He founded and taught at the Academy, one of the forerunners of the modern university. If Plato’s legacy were based on that accomplishment alone, he would be one of the most important figures in the history of Western educational thought. But Plato also dramatically presented his own teacher, Socrates, questioning others. This “Socratic method” has not only been adapted and implemented as a pedagogical technique, but it has also become a rallying cry for a certain kind of engaging, thought-provoking, student-centred education. And among the most important reasons that people continue to read him is that Plato addressed the most pressing, perennial educational questions, and he often did so via compelling images in his dramatic dialogues. Plato’s ideas about the role of education in the state and the nature of learning have reverberated through millennia of educational theory and practice, occupying many of the most influential philosophers of education who followed him—Aristotle, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Dewey, to name but three. In the chapters that follow, I discuss Plato’s engagement with education and his educational legacy. In Chaps. 1 and 2, I offer an overview of Plato’s Greece, focusing particularly on the Greeks’ understanding of education prior to and during v vi Preface Plato’s life. In addition, I provide some biographical information about Plato as he transitioned from Socrates’ student to one of the preeminent teachers of his era. In Chap. 3, I turn to Plato’s engagement with education in his corpus. I begin with a broad discussion of education in the drama of the dialogues, examining the interactions among professional teachers and potential students, informal educators and their interlocutors. I also consider the ways in which Plato presents the practice of philosophy as inextricably linked to education. In Chap. 4, I discuss Plato’s images of education, ranging from the most famous—the midwife, the gadfly and the torpedo fish—to some less familiar gems—firesticks, wax tablets, and aviaries. In the final chapters, I discuss Plato’s legacy in education. I turn in Chap. 5 to the contemporary practice of the “Socratic method” which is often believed to have roots in Plato’s dialogues. In Chap. 6, I discuss Plato’s legacy in higher education by exploring the aims and practices of the Academy and those of the most important Athenian alternative for higher education, Isocrates’ school. It is my hope that this book as a whole demonstrates Plato’s unrelenting interest in education. In both his life and his writings, Plato was committed to the principle that learning was central to living well. But what should one learn? What is the purpose of education? With which teachers should one study? The characters in Plato’s dialogues grapple with these questions and do not often articulate clear answers. Yet, as birdcatchers, we—Plato’s readers—might come to recognize how we might articulate our own answers. Tulsa, USA Avi I. Mintz Acknowledgements As I have worked on this book, I have been fortunate to study Plato alongside many others. I am grateful to the members of Tulsa’s Plato Reading Group who each summer engage in fertile discussion of the Platonic corpus. I have had the pleasure of studying Plato with two groups of students who took my courses on Plato’s educational thought at the University of Tulsa while I wrote this book. I extend my thanks to them and, particularly, to two insightful readers of Plato, Regina Ritchie and Jennifer Doty, who read chapters of this book as I was writing it. Three wonderful friends and colleagues—Will Altman, Mark Jonas, and Victor Udwin— read the manuscript and provided valuable comments and support. A special thank you to my wife Karen who not only offered important criticism of the book, but who also is a wise and sensible interlocutor whenever we discuss Platonic questions about our sons’ education—what ought they learn? What teachers ought we to seek for them? What kind of people do we hope they become? vii Contents 1 Plato as Student, Plato as Teacher .......................... 1 2 Varieties of Educative Experiences in Classical Greece........... 5 The City as Teacher .................................... 7 Fathers and Other Citizens as Teachers ...................... 8 The Poet as Teacher .................................... 8 Sophists, Orators, and Philosophers ......................... 10 A Fifth Century BCE Debate: Is Education Necessarily Good? ..... 12 3 Philosophical Education in the Platonic Corpus ................ 15 Educators Among Plato’s Characters: Socrates, Sophists and Teachers of Oratory .................................... 15 Platonic Dialogues on Education ........................... 19 The Philosopher as Learner, Learning as a Measure of Virtue ...... 21 4 Plato’s Educational Images ................................ 25 The Gadfly, Torpedo Fish, and Midwife: Agitation and Aporia ..... 25 Boxing, Wrestling, Playing, Gardening, and Sparking Fires: Sophistic Versus Philosophical Conversation .................. 27 Wax Tablets, Vision, and the Theory of Recollection ............ 30 Aviaries, Running Statues, Sunlight, and Caves: Opinion, Knowledge, and the Form of the Good ...................... 31 Taming the Herd: Education for Virtue for the Many in Republic and Laws ............................................ 34 5 The Socratic Method: Plato’s Legacy in Pedagogy .............. 41 Socratic Method in Contemporary Education .................. 42 Authentic Socratic Teaching? .............................. 45 Is Socrates a Teacher? ................................... 47 Is Socratic Teaching Open-Ended? .......................... 49 Socrates and Character Education .......................... 51 ix x Contents 6 Higher Education and Plato’s Academy in Classical Greece ....... 55 Plato’s Academy ....................................... 56 Isocrates’