Abstract
Despite the timelessness of his educational ideas, Plato’s concerns, like any philosopher’s, emerged in a particular historical context. Though he was a philosopher who was interested in the eternal and the immutable, most of his dialogues are rooted in a distinct time and place; they are set in fifth century B.C.E. Greece and the dialogues’ characters include members of his family, his teacher Socrates, and prominent Greek intellectuals and citizens. This chapter provides an overview of the historical context of education in Plato’s Greece.
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- 1.
If only that were the case, we would be able to determine more conclusively when schools began operating in Greece!
- 2.
On the evidence of these early fifth century Greek schools, see Harris (1989, pp. 57–60) and Beck (1964, pp. 76–80). We learn of a later school because of a disaster that befell it as well. In 413, the Thracians attacked a school in Mycalessus shortly after the children arrived, massacring them all (Thu. 7.29.5).
- 3.
In the cited passages from Laws, mousikē has often been translated as “cultural” education.
- 4.
In terms of pedagogy, Protagoras also mentions that in schools children learn to write by tracing faint letters drawn by their writing teachers.
- 5.
I have altered the translation, using “exercise” for agonian, rather than “gymnastics,” to avoid suggesting that here too Plato couples gymnastikē and mousikē.
- 6.
Harris suggests that the anywhere between 1 and 10% of Athenian women might have been literate (1989, p. 102). Dillon (2013) provides a highly useful overview of the evidence.
- 7.
For the depiction of girls’ education in art see Neils and Oakley (2003, pp. 244–248)
- 8.
See below Chap. 6, “A Fifth Century B.C.E debate.”
- 9.
On the accounts of Spartan education by other Greeks in the classical period, see Ducat (2006, pp. 35–67).
- 10.
Thucydides 2.41.1. I’ve emended Crawley’s translation to render paideusis schooling rather than school.
- 11.
On defining sophists as teachers of virtue see also Apology where Socrates describes their expertise as “excellence [aretē], the human and social [politikēs] kind” (Ap. 20b). See also Meno (89e–91b) and Sophist where, among other things, the sophist is described as “dealing in words and learning that have to do with virtue” (224c–d).
- 12.
See Corey (2015) for the categorization of sophists as teachers of virtue in Plato’s dialogues.
- 13.
Plato’s Megillus, a Spartan, says that the ephors are tyrannical: Sparta “has the ephors, a remarkably dictatorial institution” (L.712d). For a concise overview of Spartan education from classical Greece, see Xenophon (Pol. I-VI). For a contemporary, comprehensive scholarly account see Ducat (2006).
- 14.
During the period of democratic and oligarchic revolutions during the Peloponnesian war, Thucydides describes how boldness was prized above prudent investigation and planning: the “ability to see all sides of a question [led to] incapacity to act on any” (Thuc. 3.82.4).
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Mintz, A.I. (2018). Varieties of Educative Experiences in Classical Greece. In: Plato. SpringerBriefs in Education(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75898-5_2
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