Plato's Philosophy Of Education Stanley Cavell

The common misconception of the term education is that it is just about pursuing a higher education degree. This statement is not entirely true. A person can in fact be educated without higher learning, by going to the library and reading about different subjects. People with a higher education degree know more, but this is not necessarily enough because the other part of being educated is life experiences. A person can be book smart, but that is not nearly enough because what a person learns in books, cannot always be applied to life. This is where life experiences come in. Education is supposed to be a means to help each individual grow and part of growing up is making mistakes, and learning from them. In other words mistakes are what lead …show more content…
Building on this Plato 's work, the author, Naomi Hodgson, then examines the criticism made by Stanley Cavell. Cavell, basically argues against Plato 's idea that the process of education can be seen as a series of steps. Cavell particularly focuses on the fact that Plato sees education as a series of steps, but also sees change as a part of the education process. At the beginning of the discussion, the author points out that, Plato, sees education impossible without the willingness to change how things are currently seen, to a different view (What does it mean to be eductated, pdf). In other words, according to Plato, a person must be open for change in the way they think in order to be educated. Cavell criticizes that if education is seen as series of steps, then how can change be a part of education ,when change means to go backwards and change the way thought happens (What does it mean to be educated,pdf). Cavell has a point because change does contradict the issue of education is a series of steps. He also makes it really hard to refute his argument, because he has a point when a person becomes educated, it doesn’t just happen overnight. He is also right that the process of becoming educated is not a series of steps, where a person becomes educated in a progressive step by step process. Part of being has to do with making dozens and dozens of mistakes, but the trick is to learn from them. Plato is kind of implying that human beings are perfect, and that the whole process of becoming educated happens in a perfect manner, one step after the other. The whole idea is not possible because human beings are not perfect. If people were perfect, the world would stay stuck and not change at all. People always make decisions, but they do not always stick to them. When they do make decisions, it sometimes has to power