3 ms·

Any discussion of education seems to bring up a whole raft of ideas about what does and does not effect the young mind, and in which direction. Plato, who was

Any discussion of education seems to bring up a whole raft of ideas about what does and does not effect the young mind, and in which direction. Plato, who was rather more observant and intelligent than you or I, felt that young people would be best served by learning only valorous stories, which showed just and good men triumphing and so on. He felt that the basic components of education ought to be music and gymnastic; and that an overemphasis on music would produce an overly intellectual and sentimental adult (an overemphasis on gymnastic would produce a brute). Views seem to have completely shifted, to the point that Plato's program strikes one as absurd. However, I am not aware of any breakthrough in our understanding of the nature of education: our modern ideas are based, like those of Plato, on an observation of society, and of children, and of education, all colored by our assumptions about what is and is not valuable. When I tell people that I played video games and read novels, they are no doubt inclined to think that I must have become smart and capable thanks to the novels and despite the video games. Why do we think that way, and not in the opposite way - that I became smart by playing video games, and despite reading lots of books? When I solve a hard problem, it feels more like the feeling I have in Quake, when I'm holding the entire playing field in my head and keeping track of where my opponents could be, than like the feeling I have while reading a book.

swombat 17y ago
Plato was certainly smarter than both of us put together, but he also lived in a very different cultural landscape than we do. What books were available to young people then? Not many, I'd wager. The lack of suitable mass publication mechanisms certainly reduced the importance of literature. And the vast majority of the authors that I would think of as "great" had not been born yet. It is debatable whether a landscape devoid of mass publication means would still produce a healthy supply of great literature. Since the printing press, we've had an explosion of amazing literature produced and distributed throughout the world. Many of the greatest thinkers of the last three centuries left their thoughts behind for us to build on. As an added bonus, many of them left those thoughts in highly entertaining forms that entertain and delight as much as they instruct. It would really be looking the gift horse in the mouth to the extreme, to demand that impractical scientific studies be conducted to "prove" that humanity's great books make your life better. Of course, we may have a difference of definition here. By "escapist fiction" I assume you included most fictional works, including such masters as Gabriel Garcia Marques, Herman Hesse and Jorge Luis Borghes, who definitely have the ability to transport one outside of the real world into that of imagination.
trevelyan 17y ago
Plato's (Socrates?) position derived from his belief that cultivating a moral republic meant eliminating fiction. See The Republic. I don't know if we're really supposed to take it seriously as prescriptive advice, but it's quite different than most other approaches.

swombat 17y ago

Plato was certainly smarter than both of us put together, but he also lived in a very different cultural landscape than we do. What books were available to young people then? Not many, I'd wager. The lack of suitable mass publication mechanisms certainly reduced the importance of literature. And the vast majority of the authors that I would think of as "great" had not been born yet. It is debatable whether a landscape devoid of mass publication means would still produce a healthy supply of great literature. Since the printing press, we've had an explosion of amazing literature produced and distributed throughout the world. Many of the greatest thinkers of the last three centuries left their thoughts behind for us to build on. As an added bonus, many of them left those thoughts in highly entertaining forms that entertain and delight as much as they instruct. It would really be looking the gift horse in the mouth to the extreme, to demand that impractical scientific studies be conducted to "prove" that humanity's great books make your life better. Of course, we may have a difference of definition here. By "escapist fiction" I assume you included most fictional works, including such masters as Gabriel Garcia Marques, Herman Hesse and Jorge Luis Borghes, who definitely have the ability to transport one outside of the real world into that of imagination.

trevelyan 17y ago

Plato's (Socrates?) position derived from his belief that cultivating a moral republic meant eliminating fiction. See The Republic. I don't know if we're really supposed to take it seriously as prescriptive advice, but it's quite different than most other approaches.