![]() But even those of us who value freedom of speech and artistic expression-two values conspicuous by their absence in the Republic-probably do not think that all books or movies or television shows or videogames or music are appropriate at all ages. Many readers will shrink at Socrates’ insisting that the first thing he and his fellow theoretical architects must do is ‘supervise the storytellers’ (2.377b). We begin absorbing our culture, which is carried by the songs sung in the home and in public, so Socrates first focuses on the stories-literally the myths ( μῦθοι )-children hear in the songs sung to and around them. Socrates is especially concerned with the effects of popular culture on the development of character, both of the would-be soldier-guardians and of the citizenry at large. Supervising the Storytellers: Musical and Poetic Content (2.376c–3.392c) In Books II and III, however, the focus is on education’s less formal aspects, education in the wider sense of the Greek word παιδεία ( paideia) : upbringing or enculturation. Later in the Republic, while developing the famous Allegory of the Cave in Book VII, Plato has Socrates give an account of formal education involving arithmetic, geometry, astronomy or physics, and dialectic, a sort of philosophi cal logic, more or less inventing what has come to be known as liberal education. A little later, he will reconsider this way of thinking about education’s objects, holding that physical training and poetic education are ‘both chiefly for the sake of the soul’ (3.410c). In Books II and III Plato sees education as a two-pronged endeavor, comprising ‘physical training for bodies and music and poetry for the soul’ (2.376e). ![]() Education is a topic of sustained focus in the Republic. Confucius’ Analects, which predates Plato’s Republic by almost a century, devotes considerable attention to the nature and value of education and in fact begins by celebrating it indeed, the first word ‘The Master’ is quoted as saying is xue ( 學), which means learning or study. He is not the first philosopher to do so, as readers familiar with non-Western philosophy will know. ![]() In having Socrates work out the proper education for the would-be guardians-which at least initially must include all the city’s children-Plato engages in the philosophy of education for the first time in the Western philosophical tradition.
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