Education As Depicted In Plato's The Matrix

Education in the ‘normal sense’ is learning, school, and the collection of knowledge. This is basic principles behind the modern education system. Most industrialized and democratic nations, provide varying levels of free, public education. In the United States, this length of time is, twelve years, elementary, middle and high school. Some modern European countries have expanded this to include free secondary education like college, or trade schools. However, education, has not always been this streamlined, in fact, Plato, would argue that ‘education’ today is not even education. Plato’s idea or definition of education is learning the ability to discern the copy from the original. “Education is not what some people boastfully profess it to be. They say that they can pretty much put knowledge into the souls that lack it, like putting sight …show more content…
In ‘The Matrix’, education works similarly. What education is in the traditional sense today is obsolete in the Matrix. Any facts or techniques the Neo needs to learn or know, he simply downloads into his brain. When Neo actually applies, this knowledge, and learns how act and think beyond ‘The Matrix’, is when Neo becomes truly educated. This mirrors the Platonic idea of education. Further, education is actually a recollection, according to Plato. It is not a matter of truly learning new information, that is not education. All education is in reality, a recollection, a recall of information that was already there, and then forgotten, not the acquisition of new information. In contrast with Descartes, Plato did not believe that humans at birth are blank. Plato believed the opposite, that humans at birth are, reincarnations of previous selves, and thus on some level retain information from previous lives, it is only a matter of recalling, not learning. ‘The Matrix’ does not fit this concept quite as well, but it does in several senses. How would people like Neo and Morpheus feel