The Socratic Theory of Recollection - Essay Example

"There is no such thing as teaching, and no such thing as learning" Education is a which now commands a great deal of attention. What kinds of schools should we have Who should attend them What purposes should they serve How much should government or private agencies control them To what degree and in what manner should they be financed by public monies What kind of intellectual, moral, political, and religious training, if any, ought they to provide These are questions which greatly agitate the politician, the parent, and the ordinary citizen alike. Interest in education is more highly concentrated in a special group. Thousands of teachers and thousands of others preparing for the teaching profession constitute this group, and for them a more important interest arises. They must ask themselves not only questions such as those listed, but also many others specific to their profession. What is education Are there any general objectives for it Are there any universal methods in it Is there such a thing as the typical child upon whom they may be practiced Traditionally, philosophical methods have consisted of analysis and clarification of concepts, arguments, theories, and language. Philosophers, as philosophers, have not usually created theories of education (or teaching, learning, and the like); instead, they have analyzed theories and arguments--sometimes enhancing previous arguments, sometimes raising powerful objections that lead to the revision or abandonment of theories and lines of arguments. (Leon Bailey, 205)However, there are many exceptions to this view of philosophy as analysis and clarification. The classical Greek philosophers, for example, construed philosophy much more broadly and explored a host of questions that later philosophers--more narrowly analytic in their outlook--rejected as outside the scope of philosophy. Indeed, for the Greeks, "philosophy" meant "love of wisdom," and today we think of their discussions as part of an "immortal conversation." Many of us believe that philosophy went too far in rejecting the eternal questions, and there are signs that philosophers may once again invite their students to join in the immortal conversation. Socrates was one of the philosophers who grounded independent education, stating that both teacher and pupil had equal roles in the process of education. Further we will discuss Socrates' theory of recollection in the view of saying: " "There is no such thing as teaching, and no such thing as learning". Socrates' attitude to knowledge and education was clearly announced in Apology: a life of the former kind is not worth living. Once one recognizes one's ignorance, one must recognize that a life in such a state is not worth living. One must make it one's chief concern to seek out "wisdom, truth, and the best possible state of one's soul." Nevertheless, in the early dialogues, Socrates puts forth no substantive view about how such knowledge is to be acquired, either because he failed to recognize the problem or because he had no solution to it. (Charles J. Brauner, 353-355) His contribution is limited to seeking out those who profess to care about these things, questioning them, examining them, and testing them, learning from them if they know (unfortunately no one he meets does), and persuading them of their ignorance if and when they do not. Socrates had the support of the Delphic oracle (and perhaps even his daimonion) to sustain his faith that this was enough. The teacher, according to Socrates, is the leader of civilization. He must pursue truth even when his contemporaries oppose him. Integrity, above all, is demanded from the schoolmaster. The function of the teacher, according to Socrates, is to awaken the average man. The majority, he felt, is guided by irrational thoughts and lethargy, and lives in a cave of half-truths and illusions. Once the student is stirred, and once he becomes aware, he sees a new meaning in life. He probes and he questions. He is guided by curiosity and takes pleasure in intellectual inquiry. Yet education, Socrates maintained, has ultimately a social function. What matters is not our own brilliance, but how we radiate our ideas and how we change society so that morality and intelligence are combined. To Socrates, the teacher is anything but a specialist. Education, philosophy, ethics, and religion all are basically one and aim at the creation of a rational individual. The most important task of the teacher, he maintained, is to be the conscience of his time. This means that he must cherish the ideals of knowledge even when he faces social disapproval and persecution. In the time of Socrates we can see two contrasting notions of education. The sophist treats his pupil as an empty receptacle to be filled from the outside with the teacher's ideas. Socrates respects the pupil's own creativity, holding that, with the right kind of assistance, the young man will produce ideas from his own mind and will be enabled to work out for himself whether they are tree or false. Like childbirth, the process can be painful, for it hurts to be made to formulate one's own ideas and, having done so, to find out for oneself what they are worth ; many turn on Socrates in angry resentment at seeing some nonsense they have produced exposed by him. But the other side of the coin is the progress that can be made this way, progress measured not only by the valuable truths found within oneself and brought to birth , but also by the accompanying growth in self-knowledge, the awareness of what one knows and does not know. Self-knowledge is the benefit peculiarly associated with the Socratic method, and Theaetetus is already dimly aware that he is in travail with a conception of what knowledge is . Orthodox teaching, even when it is a reputable man like Theodorus rather than Prodicus giving the instruction, does not have the same effect, save per accidents, because the thoughts imparted to the pupil are not his to begin with and do not have their roots in his experience and attachments. (John Elof Boodin, 197) The Socrates theory that learning is the recollecting of knowledge possessed by the soul before birth stands or falls by the contention that any soul, throughout its embodied life, has true opinions within it which can be elicited by the right kind of questioning; hence the test case in which Socrates' questions lead an uneducated slave to the solution of a mathematical problem. Socrates appears to hold, further, that all knowledge is to be gained by recollection, from within . There are interpretative problems about how this is to be taken, but, but many contemporaries of Socrates were more modest concerning theory of recollection: they never said or implied that all truths, or all knowable truths, are to be got from within, only that many important ones are delivered by Socrates' skill , and nothing at all is indicated as to how these might become knowledge. That would prejudge the discussion to come, while any hint that Socratic midwifery could encompass all (knowable) truths would be inconsistent with one of the more positive of later results, that perception, the use of the senses, is necessary for knowledge of various empirical matters and in some cases even for mistaken judgements about them. Thirdly, the theory of recollection was introduced in the Meno (Socrates' dialogues) to meet a puzzle about seeking to know what one does not know (how is this possible unless one knows what one is looking for, in which case how can inquiry be needed): now the same problem, or a closely related puzzle about knowing and not knowing the same thing. The Socrates' theory can be implemented in modern educational practice. The ability to mould one's teaching so that it most closely aligns with students' learning needs is developed and enhanced through better understanding the participants in the teaching and learning environment. This understanding is based on developing relationships with students on a personal basis both as individuals and as a group. The personal aspect of knowing one's students is obviously something which is fundamental to helping each individual strive to learn for understanding. However, the importance of group relationships is sometimes overlooked in teaching. Yet the way individuals relate to one another and to their teachers is different in different situations, hence the need to be able to relate to learners as a group. This entails a need to know individuals and the ways they interact and develop within their group because, as the group develops, so relationships within the group develop, and these relationships are far from static, they are continually evolving. Another importnat point of the recollection theory is independence of educational process. Relationships within the teaching-learning environment are influenced by the extent to which independence is acknowledged and respected. (Leon Bailey, 176) Despite the teaching concern to achieve desired learning outcomes (notwithstanding the fact that learners, too, have learning expectations), there is still a need to recognize that good teaching inevitably leads to a diversity of learning outcomes. Therefore, individuals' independence is important in shaping the extent to which they choose to take up the opportunities possible through their interactions. It is not possible to make real choices if there is not a sense of independence. Lack of independence encourages convergence of learning rather than a breadth of understanding. A crucial factor associated with the development of independence is the teacher's ability to withhold judgment. Learners are not likely to pursue their own understanding or to reconsider others' views if they have a sense of being judged, or if they are trying to 'guess what is in the teacher's head'. The need to withhold judgment, to be conscious of one's own wait-time and to want to hear from others is a key to building relationships that enhance a diversity of learning outcomes. The conclusion for this essay shall be the following, a teacher is not the only one who can regulate the learning situation. Learners often develop metacognitive skills that help them monitor and control their learning. Some of these may be used without conscious thought; others are deployed deliberately. Self-regulation that has developed from experience may be improved by tuning existing strategies and adding others, particularly with older learners who have some awareness of their own thinking processes and can deploy strategies themselves. This is when learning and practicing in the contexts where such strategies would naturally be used may increase the likelihood that they will be used repeatedly. Bibliography 1. Marjorie Grene (1966), The Knower and the Known; Basic Books, pp. 18-22. 2. Charles J. Brauner, Hobert W. Burns (1962) Philosophy of Education: Essays and Commentaries; Ronald Press, pp. 353-355 3. Thomas J. Shuell (1993) Toward an Integrated Theory of Teaching and Learning; Educational Psychologist, Vol. 28, pp. 43-44. 4. John Elof Boodin (1951), Truth and Reality: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge; Macmillan, pp. 197. 5. Leon Bailey (1996), Critical Theory and the Sociology of Knowledge: A Comparative Study in the Theory of Ideology; Peter Lang, pp. 176, 205 Read More