The Importance Of Education In Plato's The Allegory Of The Cave

Education plays an essential and meaningful role in the world. Everyone is born to be educated in order to enrich their minds. There are various ways human can be educated and get rid of ignorance. In the text “The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, it describes the ignorance of those prisoners. They reject to receive the truths about the outside world. Ignorance is horrible, but it is even more pathetic if people refuse to obtain knowledge. It is important to understand ourselves and find a best way to improve ourselves. Like the text “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X, it tells us even if we do not have good conditions to receive education, “homemade education” is also a useful way to get knowledge and be successful (1). Therefore, we should exert

We know what we are learning and can find what we like from self-education. If we do not have any interests to do something, then we cannot do our best and keep going. Instead, interests can help us to keep searching and learning new information. Malcolm X said, “As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive” (3). This tells us he realizes his interest by reading books every day and enjoys learning from books. Books become a huge part of his life and make him successful. If someone forces us to add new knowledge and do not care whether we like or not, we will never absorb those knowledge. Additionally, Malcolm X wrote “I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity—because you can hardly mention anything I’m not curious about” (4). This is important because self-education helps him to figure out what he is curious about. For this, he has motivation to get new knowledge and determination to satisfy himself. In general, self-education can increase our interests on something new and satisfy our demands simultaneously because we can choose what to learn and how to

It is not necessary for us to stay in a fixed space and doing homework to summarize what we learn. Plato described that “education is … albeit incorrectly aligned, and looking in the wrong direction—and contrives to make it look in the right direction” (4). This tells us education cannot be a kind of coercion and should not be a rigid style. We need education, but we cannot be trapped by education. Otherwise, we will lose other meaningful things. Hence, self-education becomes a good way because it is helpful as well as learning in the school. For example, Malcolm X studied in the prison by himself and became a legendary person. Malcolm X believed his education was not scantier than others because he thought “one of the biggest trouble with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that” (4). This proves self-education is better than learning in the school because it is easy to divert our attentions when we stay with others. Also, there are more problems we ought to ponder. As an adult, we do not have much time to travel from school to working places. We prefer taking advantage of all that extra time. Therefore, self-education is the best choice because flexible education doesn’t give people too much stress and it also provides people more reasonable and comfortable