The roles of student and teacher have always existed. They will continue to exist until the end of time. A student is like an empty vessel waiting to be filled by knowledge. A teacher is a vessel filled with knowledge wanting to distribute it. This is the circulation of knowledge that has been and will always be in existence. IN the “Allegory of the Cave” the prisoners are all students. They are empty vessels that have not experienced the world. When one prisoner is released he is disbelief of what he is seeing. He thought that everything was shadows but they were not. He was in shock and it took him some time to comprehend and understand this. During this process is when he transitioned from a student to a teacher. With his new found knowledge he went back to the other prisoners to teach them. Because all their life they only saw shadows they didn’t believe him. In this instance the job of the teacher is to teach the students what they know and the students will take that information and ask questions to further educate themselves.
The purpose of education is to guid someone through life. When a person receives education they encouraged to ask questions, seek more knowledge and perhaps even decide what their purpose in life is. When someone is fond of what they have learned they seek more information on that topic. This leads to someone being very educated on this topic and most likely making a career out of this topic.
Sharif,
Nice reflection.
Yes, the prisoner shifts from student to teacher in the moment where he wishes to return to his fellow prisoners. I think Plato provides an important lesson here– that sometimes we play the role strictly of STUDENT or TEACHER, but more often then not in life we move fluidly between these two roles. Although I am officially the TEACHER, I am constantly learning things from my students (tech hacks, vocab./slang words, and deeper more profound observations about the world as well!)