The Educational Value of Platos Early Socratic Dialogues Essay

The Educational Value of Platos Early Socratic DialoguesABSTRACT When contemplating the origins of philosophical paideia one is tempted to think of Socrates, perhaps because we feel that Socrates has been a philosophical educator to us all. But it is Plato and his literary genius that we have to thank as his dialogues preserve not just Socratic philosophy, but also the Socratic educational experience. Educators would do well to better understand Platos pedagogical objectives in the Socratic dialogues so that we may appreciate and utilize them in our profess educational endeavors, and so that we may adapt the Socratic experience to brisk interactive educational technologies. Plato designed his Socratic dialogues to arm students for real humankind challenges and temptations. First, in both form and function the dialogues attempt to replicate the Socratic experience for their audience. They demand from their readers what Socrates demanded from his students active learning, self-ex amination, and an appreciation for the complexity and importance of wisdom. Second, the dialogues challenge the conflation of pro and personal excellence, best exemplified by sophists such as Hippias, and recommend their reader to pursue personal aret separately from and alongside practical and professional skills or technai. Third, they aim not to transmit some prepackaged blueprint for success, but to teach students to learn for themselves that is to love and pursue wisdom. The Socratic dialogues, and philosophic dialogue itself, are educationally important in that they teach us to be philosophers in the literal sense. It is instructively ironic that scholars look in a flash to the Republic when considering Platos theory of education, yet most of... ...oral sense from being bully at a particular skill .(3) I am present reminded of one of my own students reaction to Socrates. A meek Vietnamese adult female who said barely anything in class wrote, Socrates gives me the coura ge to stand up for my belief and not to be afraid of others who tell me Im wrong.(4) For this description I am indebted to Prof. Kostas Michaelides of the University of Cyprus.(5) This image is expressed eloquently in Socrates elenchos of Agathon in Symposium 199c-201c and of Menexenus in Lysis 216c-221d(6) See, for example, Laches 192e ff. and Charmides 164bc.(7) I am indebted for this eloquent distinction to Prof. Gerhard A. Rauche, prof Emeritus of the University of Durban-Westivile, South Africa.(8) These characteristics of the Platonic telos are advocated by Prof. Apostolos Pierris of the University of Patras, Greece