Eric Dancie

English 220
Professor Aplain
Project 1


Ever since I could remember my mother has drilled the idea into my head
that education is the most important thing I can obtain on this earth. I recall her
telling me constantly that they can take everything thing away from you in this life
expect for your knowledge. That idea has always stuck to me and is part of the
reason I am who I am today. With me being from Atlanta, Georgia I have had the
chance to grow up with and around some people that are simply stuck in their ways.
They have always lived in the south they have never seen anything different then
what they know some people havent even been outside of there own town. I was
blessed enough to be able to travel out west for college and experience a whole new
life that I myself could not imagine. I have learned and accepted new cultures
discovered new religions and even found new pastimes that I will probably
participate in for the rest of my life. I would have never known this was out here
until I broke the chains of comfort and left my original college in the heart of Atlanta
and transferred out west.
When I first stepped off the plane in Phoenix, Arizona I can not lie I didnt just
fall in love with it from the start it took me a while to get accustom to everything I
actually wanted to turn right back around and go home. I knew very few people, it
was hot and it was my first time living away from home. I was blinded by the
comfort of what I knew, similar to the prisoner that was released from the cave in
Platos video. Until his eyes adjusted to the light he was not able to understand the
world he had just entered, the unknown will always be a fear of humans because we
never know the things that can occur until we are able to process them. Once his
eyes finally adjusted to the light he was able to understand what reality was and
how different things were from the dark cave he once spent all of his living seconds
in.
Once I finally got comfortable and actually started to enjoy myself It felt like I
discovered a whole new world. Everything was just different from what they ate to
how they partied to even how they talked, I opened myself up to everything trying
to get experiences that I didnt know existed in Georgia. I was filled with so much
excitement from what I had learned and seen that I couldnt wait to get back and tell
all of the other people that I knew what I had encountered on the other side of the
country. I did not get the response that I thought I would get though of course my
imitate family missed me and showered we with love, but when I got around my
peers is when things started to seem a little different. They were kind of distant
things were not like they were when I first left and they thought my new hobbies
were lame. They couldnt understand that I had changed and I wasnt just doing the
same things that they were everyday. Like the prisoner I was looked at as more of a
threat then a friend that had spent countless time with them and made memories.
This is why I believe that Plato message on education is in support of the soul
being empty and we as humans filling part of it with education. Plato explains this
idea himself by saying that it is the role model whether that is parent or guardian it is
there reasonability.
If this part of such a nature had been hammered from childhood, then the relatives
of becoming, which grow on to it through eating and similar gluttonous desires and
pleasures and turn the souls vision downward, would have been struck from it like lead
weights. Then, rid of those and turned around to things that are true, the eyes of those
same souls would have seen truth the most sharply, just as now they see sharply,
whatever theyre turned to (Plato, 1979, p. 179). When the man was in the cave he
thought that he had an idea of what was going on but he had no clue all he could go
off of were shadows and sounds of things that he thought were real. When he got the
chance to be released and witnessed the fire and statues that were behind them he
realized it was a whole different world out there. Everything that he started to see
was the most real thing that he got the chance to come in contact with in his whole
entire life. This relates back to my personal story because a majority of the people
back home that I interact with that have never been outside the perimeter of the city
only know one way of life. All their ideas and thoughts distorted from being stuck in
the city. They believe that Atlanta is as good as it gets and there is no other place
that they would rather be. Even though the cave wasnt a place of wealth but
imprisonment it was the only place that the freed prisoner knew and at first he was
so freighted that he wanted to return back to the nightmare that he once knew. He
bypassed each level till he finally reached the outside where the sun was the giver of
all life and he finally realized that this was the cause of what is good in life.


I now love the west coast and it is hard for me to return home sometimes
because I know the people back there are stuck in their ways. I enjoy telling people
about the wonderful things that they can come in contact with in the south as well
as the west and as well as the similarities but I have even more enjoyment
encouraging these people to go find out and live life for themselves. What they want
to experience and learn will help them evolve and advance in life with a open mind
and brain but we naturally fill our souls up with things that we are interested in.
Education is not something that we are born with, it is a gift that we learn from
experience that we feel should be passed on to our future generations. Explained
even better by Paul Cantagallo The long and arduous road to becoming a
ruler of the State begins with informal intellectual stimulation. Plato
advances the position of early learning as amusement, so as not to
discourage children from it. Gradually, the most promising children are
tested; those who succeed, move onward. The education and training
of a guardian is a combination of the different types of knowledge and
experience available to human beings, from the purely speculative and
academic to the experiential. We chose how we educate ourselves
and everybody has a different experience of what they feel they should
learn but it is up to you as a person to go out and install that
education inside yourself because you will only learn what you truly
want to learn.


Work cited
1. Paul Cantagallo, author of ClassicNote. Completed on May 27,
2000, copyright held by GradeSaver.

2.Plato. The Republic.. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1999
3. SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on The Republic. SparkNotes.com.
SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 20 Jun. 2014.
4. Annas, Julia (1981). An Introduction to Plato's Republic. Oxford
University Press.