In this past week probably the best thing I did in all my
classes was my essay for my History of Science class. So far that class has
been really interesting and I’m really enjoying it. We have been covering Greek
philosophers thus far and each week we get a new outside source we are supposed
to read. This week we were supposed to read Plato’s Republic, Book VII. This particular book detailed the allegory of
the cave and Plato’s views on teaching and education. I have been introduced to
the allegory of the cave before in high school but this time I was really able
to dive into it and analyze it piece by piece. The purpose of the essay was to
be a brief summarization of the reading and then to analyze it in any way we
saw fit.
Overall I feel really confident about the paper I wrote and
I was actually enthusiastic about writing it! I chose to tie in a previous
lecture we had in which we talked about Plato’s idea of knowledge being possessed
within a person’s soul. He felt that people didn’t ever learn new information.
This information was already within them they just had to bring it out through
numbness of the soul. This essentially means a person moves past all opinions
and previous notions about what they think they know to truly open themselves
up. This allows them to bring out that knowledge that they already possessed.
This means that teachers aren’t truly teachers. They are more of guides that
help lead someone to this level of enlightenment. All of this is exemplified
metaphorically in his allegory of the cave. This was a really interesting read
and brought up some pretty unique ideas. This was definitely the most
interesting and the best thing I did this week!
Wow! That class sounds incredibly interesting, even for someone like me who doesn't particularly care for science! I think it's funny that you basically read about the fixed mindset as opposed to the growth mindset. I think it's a great way to show that people have always believed that there is only a certain amount of knowledge you can obtain or unlock. Which is the complete opposite of today where people believe that you can always obtain more information if you work for it.
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