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The Benefits Education Has On Individuals And/Or Society Plato, the most creative and influential of Socrates' disciples, wrote dialogues, in which he frequently used the figure of Socrates to espouse his own (Plato's) full-fledged philosophy. In "The Republic, " Plato sums up his views in an image of ignorant humanity, trapped in the depths and not even aware of its own limited perspective. The rare individual escapes the limitations of that cave and, through a long, tortuous intellectual journey, discovers a higher realm, a true reality, with a final, almost mystical awareness of Goodness as the origin of everything that exists. Such a person is then the best equipped to govern in society, having a knowledge of what is ultimately most worthwhile in life and not just a knowledge of techniques; but that person will frequently be misunderstood by those ordinary folks back in the cave who haven't shared in the intellectual insight. If he were living today, Plato might replace his rather awkward cave metaphor with a movie theater, with the projector replacing the fire, the film replacing the objects which cast shadows, the shadows on the cave wall with the projected movie on the screen, and the echo with the loudspeakers behind the screen. The essential point is that the prisoners in the cave are not seeing reality, but only a shadowy representation of it.
The importance of the allegory lies in Plato's belief that there are invisible truths lying under the apparent surface of things which only the most enlightened can grasp. Used to the world of illusion in the cave, the prisoners at first resist enlightenment, as students resist education. But those who can achieve enlightenment deserve to be the leaders and rulers of all the rest. At the end of the passage, Plato expresses another of his favorite ideas: that education is not a process of putting knowledge into empty minds, but of making people realize that which they already know. This notion that truth is somehow embedded in our minds was also powerfully influential for many centuries.
In the Allegory of the Cave, the cave is the world, the fetters are the imagination, the shadows of ourselves are the passive states which we know by introspection. The learned in the cave are those who possess empirical forms of knowledge (who know how to make predictions, the doctors who know how to cure people by using empirical methods, those who know what is going on, etc. ). Their knowledge is nothing but a shadow. Education, he says, is, according to the generally accepted view of it, nothing but the forcing of thoughts into the minds of children. For, says Plato, each person has within himself the ability to think. If one does not understand, this is because one is held by the fetters.
Whenever the soul is bound by the fetters of suffering, pleasure, etc. it is unable to contemplate through its own intelligence the unchanging patterns of things. No doubt, there are mathematicians in the cave, but their attention is given to honors, rivalries, competition, etc. If anyone is not able to understand the unchanging patterns of things that is not due to a lack of intelligence; it is due to a lack of moral stamina. Temple Grandin's Thinking in Pictures begins with "A. " It runs in families. Its cause is unknown.
Blood tests and similar diagnostic technology can't identify it; the diagnosis is solely behavioral. It's often seen together with depression and other disorders. It was long believed psychiatric in origin, caused by frigid mothering and an excess of stubborn, antisocial character traits. Those who have it are typically wrapped up in themselves, incapable of seeing the other person's viewpoint, given to outbursts of rage but rarely capable of empathy. They are emotionally immature and low in social skills. They are apt to disregard authority and manners, to be dirty, disheveled and rude of speech.
The disorder often afflicts persons of above-average intelligence. If not addressed, it may prove totally disabling. There is a great range of presentations. There is no cure; and treatment has confounded experts for many decades. Recovery means learning to identify one's personal triggers, to become attuned to one's bodily and mental warning signs, to experiment with lifestyle, diet, exercise and sometimes medications until something works. Relapse is common and progress is slow.
With proper treatment and by taking advantage of support groups, persons who have it can lead productive lives and even make outstanding contributions to society. No, it's not alcoholism or addiction. Temple Grandin's Thinking in Pictures is the story of her childhood and life with autism. I want to thank Claudia P. of the email list for recommending this book to me. I know a few things about substance abuse but knew nothing about autism beyond what was shown in The Rain Man.
I found the book a fascinating education about a neighboring disorder and an inspiring story of personal recovery. Instead of dwelling on her defects, Grandin took what she was handed and made lemonade. She was almost incapable of verbal thinking, but excelled at visual and spatial thought. She was extremely fearful around people and incapable of catching on to the flow of human emotions; but she discovered that she felt peaceful around cattle and excelled at understanding the perceptions and feelings of cows, sheep and other prey mammals. She was appalled at the stupidity and cruelty with which cattle were being handled in much of the meatpacking industry.
Impassioned by the cause of improving the animals' treatment, she developed a career designing better cattle handling equipment in feedlots and slaughterhouses. To get there, she had to break the gender barrier in the industry, becoming the first woman in the feedlots and slaughterhouses and paving the way for many others. She worked with single-minded devotion and energy, amassing an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and of animal-handling equipment. She became a great success in her field. Today more than one third of the cattle in the U. S.
packing industry are processed in equipment Grandin designed. She divides her time between consulting in the cattle-handling industry and lecturing about autism. For the alcoholic and addict in recovery, there are wonderful insights in Grandin's story. She is a strong believer in focusing on the positive. "I think there is too much emphasis on deficits and not enough emphasis on developing abilities, " she writes. She found it liberating to recognize that the various psychiatric, psychological and moralistic theories of autism were nonsense; that her problems "weren't the result of my weakness or lack of character, " and that the problem lies in the neuro chemistry of the brain, particularly the limbic system. Grandin believes that the perceived defects of many autistic people, such as becoming fixated on a subject, can be turned into assets by cultivating a deep knowledge of a subject area and becoming expert in it.
She praises the Internet as a wonderful medium of communication and growth for people with impaired social skills and emotional deficits. She accepts her emotional limitations ("I don't know what a deep relationship is") and, like Einstein, she derives joy and even sensuous pleasure from a successful new insight or design. She wastes no time bemoaning her verbal deficits, but instead celebrates her visual capabilities. Deeply engaged in the daily business of conveying thousands of her hoofed soul-mates to their deaths, she says she lives each day all out, as if it were her last. Incapable of an emotional religious faith, but made anxious by the thought of an unordered universe, she constructs a notion of an impersonal God out of some hypotheses of quantum mechanics, which amount to the belief that all things are interconnected and that what goes around comes around. She disbelieves in an afterlife, and sees that immortality is achieved in this world only by the effect that one's thoughts and actions have on other people.
Works used: Plato's 'Republic' / Allegory of the Cave & Critical Thinking, Athlone Pr; (June 2002) Thinking in Pictures, by Temple Grandin, Vintage Books (NY), 1995. ISBN 0 - 679 - 77289 - 8. Tutor Gig. com, Internet Encyclopedia
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