Allegory Of The Cave Education

When a human is born, they start out from the lowest state of learning, without education, but only at imagination, which allows them to accept what they seen in their daily life. Human without education in the lowest state of learning is like the prisoners have been in the cave since childhood. Darkness in the cave is relates to the initial stage of education that blocking the prisoners from gaining knowledge. In the story, “Allegory of the Cave”, Socrates, who is a mentor to Plato, mentions, “The people have been in this dwelling since childhood, shackled by the legs and necks. Thus they stay in the same place so that there is only one thing for them to look at: whatever they encounter in front of their faces. But because they are shackled, they are unable to turn
their heads around.” (18). Socrates refers to the chained prisoners have very limited knowledge and grow up with an ignorant situation. Darkness in the cave that the prisoners are facing is similar to student stages of learning. In the beginning stages of learning, students have very limited insight. They do not know what to do until someone tells them to follow the instruction. For example, students will follow their teacher’s instruction to read out the words one by one from the workbook. They will be able to gain knowledge when they are willing to learn from others. Even though it will be a long journey to educate the students or the prisoners to gain knowledge, the chains on their necks and limbs prevent them to move around in the cave which limits them to have no insight and are only allows to see what is in front of them that reflected on the wall. According to Socrates, “Between the fire and those who are shackled there runs a walkway at a certain height. Imagine that a low wall has been built the length of the walkway, like the low curtain that puppeteers put up, over which they show their puppets” (18). The puppeteers are walking around in the cave with the puppets. They present the puppets in front of the fire to show a reflection on the wall for the chained prisoners to see.
The reflection makes the prisoners to accept what they see is reality. the relationship between the prisoners looking at the wall and the students is students will accept what they are taught by their parents or the teachers in the learning process. At the same time, Socrates also describes, “All in all those who were chained would consider nothing besides the shadows of the artifacts as the unhidden” (18). Students will not step out of the box to think more about what they’ve just learned. They will take the information on what they see and hear as the reality without putting extra efforts on analyzing the information they got. They blocked themselves from understanding the true nature of education. What they’ve learned is just an illusion which is similar to the prisoners accepting what they seen on the wall as reality. Comparing the modern life of people with the prisoners, they have limited ability and subject to live in what they should. In conclusion, information they gained are subjective and comprehensive which makes the prisoners and students have limited insight about the real
world.