Plato's Making Learning As Close To Play

Register to read the introduction… He believes that a child's character will be formed while he/she is at play and the main tool for the formation of character is storytelling. Plato felt that children should never be scared by monsters stories and the horrors of damnation. By doing so you risked making cowards of them. Stories should provide models for children to imitate, and should be strictly supervised by the mother and caregivers. He felt that children of opposite sexes should be allowed to play together until the age of six. After the age of six girls should attend lessons in riding, archery, and all other subjects like boys and both boys and girls should engage in dancing and wrestling to help them develop grace, strength and endurance. Upon the higher levels of education, the student’s reason would be trained in the processes of thinking and abstracting. Plato believed that children should be educated in virtues. That by educating them in the virtues would give them a desire to become the perfect citizen. He believed that the perfect citizens would know how to rule as well as be ruled. He also believed that with a proper education at an early age you could nurture a child while subordinating the senses to reason. …show more content…
They would study three years of reading, writing, and the poets, and another three learning the lyre, and will study elementary mathematics up to the age of seventeen or eighteen. Between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, the future guardian would receive a higher education to prepare him for ruling the state. His studies would include mathematics, music, and literature. At the age of thirty he would have enough maturity to begin his study of philosophy. At thirty-five, his formal education would cease and he would enter upon a minor administrative position, prior to undertaking more important governing