I believe there are many aspects of education presented in Republic viable today if only the conditions permitted their viability. At the heart of the education mentioned was the telling of tales (instruction) that were rightly approved by the guardians of the city (2.376c, 377c, 378e) as well as reading (3.387c, 402b). The tales told were meant to invoke the proper virtues (cf. 2.378e, 3.396c-e, 401e-402a) conducive to the morality of a city or society (cf. 2.368e-369c). The subject of many of these speeches (tales) were to be the gods which were to be told– not to the gods disparagement — in a way that would invoke interest and impart virtues (2.379a, 383a; 3.388d-389a). Education was not meant to merely be limited to the mind, but was to be extended to the body as well (2.376e; 3.410d, 412b). Education was to be governed on a local as opposed to national or empirical level in order to provide for the proper oversight and execution (2.379a, 380c, 383c; et. al.). Instructors were to be selected upon the basis of those laws which were enacted by the city and in accordance with the city’s goals — namely morality and virtue. Those teachings and teachers which had a disdain for the gods and human beings were to not teach or be told — namely the tale of Achilles (3.390e-391e). To glorify such a lack of virtue would “sow a string of proclivity for badness in [the] young” (3.391e-392a). Socrates and Glaucon realized that the lack of a virtuous education centered on the gods, reading, and gymnastics would produce an idleness that would manifest itself in “licentiousness and illness” which would in turn render a city subject to a suzerain (3.405a-b). What Socrates realized — that the United States once practiced — was that education was meant to mold the minds of citizens in order to create a cooperative assembly called a city that would esteem morality. For Socrates said, “Don’t you know that the beginning is the most important part of every work and that this is especially so with anything young and tender? For at that state it’s most plastic, and each thing assimilates itself to the model whose stamp anyone wishes to give to it” (2.377b). Simply put, education should begin at a young age, because at a young age a person’s course is strongly determined.
The Socratic Form of Education in a Republic
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