Micro-Activity # 4: Allegory of the Cave

In this story, the two roles of “teacher” and “student” are very much present. The dynamics fo these roles vary in the story. A very straight forward way of observing this roles is viewing all the prisoners as both students and teachers. Considering that they all have the same upbringing and live exactly the same lives with no system in place, they all hear and see the same things which, gives them the same role. Their competitive nature puts them on a fairly even playing field as far as they can see. Then, the freed prisoner becomes strictly a student when leaving the cave and seeing the outside world. He is “learning” about the real world, and the world his “teacher.” When bringing this information back to the prisoners in the cave we see him take on the roll of “teacher” and prisoners become “students.” I think what differentiates these roles is when one is in a position of learning. It can be argued that the prisoners inside their cave are not students because they are choosing not to absorb the information given to them by the freed prisoner. The prisoners in the cave also would not view the freed prisoner as a teacher, they viewed him as crazy because his perception of their reality has changed. The story goes to show that these titles can only exist when there is a learning demographic present. Knowledge can be powerful but only if people are willing to hear it.

In a school setting, I believe that education is here for the purpose of success. It is here for students to absorb and then use that knowledge and grow. Education is here to teach us basic life skills for us to adapt and learn further in our lives. However, I do believe that there are very indirect pathways for education to be a part of someone life. For instance, there can be a person with a lack resources coming from school districts that typically underperform. But this person can still be extremely intelligent from education that is not sourced from schools. Sometimes a persons upbringing is what makes them intelligent, their life experience can sometime offer more knowledge and more to learn than a school can.

Education can also fail you as a student. Throughout my entire life I have learned all about American history. I have always performed fairly well in Western Civ classes. It was not until I was much older that I was told that majority of  the history I knew  was either not true or was re-written to fit a nationalist narrative.  This has led me to try to find outside sources to gain insight about my history. Being black and hispanic you rarely hear about your history pre colonialism. Having an education provided by American textbook writers has led me to realize that even if you perform well in the system it still is not built for you. Seeing that Latin history and African history are all electives in my school has led me to crave education from pathways outside of universities now more than ever.  In conclusion, I believe that the purpose of education from a systematic point of view is to succeed, but in a personal point of view it is to learn and adapt to find your own pathway in life.