Education Concepts of the Cave Allegory

A Case Study of Plato’s Metaphors inside the Cave

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220504.396How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Whole-person Education; Plato; Cave Allegory; Metaphor

Abstract

Many institutions of higher education are now advocating the concepts of whole-person education, hoping that the personality, physique, and knowledge of the students who are receiving education on campus will be comprehensively improved to become a “whole-person” through four-year university training. The ultimate goal is for students to take the initiative to discover their own uniqueness. However, students are often confined to the teaching system and syllabus where they are even more restricted to the given topics in assignment writings, which their creativities are limited. Students spend far more time on homework and exams than others, such as club activities and physical exercises. When introducing Plato’s cave allegory into the practice of the actual university life, the cave represents a state that students lack a specific ability of exploring ungiven knowledge proactively. The role of students is the self-ignorant prisoner in the cave. Therefore, students need a guide in cave to help them break the bondages of their souls and bodies, lighting their way out of the cave. Education plays a decisive role in guiding students towards self-knowledge, which echoes the Plato’s idea of “turning the direction”. It is a significant process which students transition from the world of self-blindness to the real knowable world.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yu Liu
AU  - Tianlan Liu
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/06/01
TI  - Education Concepts of the Cave Allegory
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 8th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 2183
EP  - 2186
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220504.396
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220504.396
ID  - Liu2022
ER  -