Nadia Coleman

English 120-024
Research Genre Essay

Views on Education
Education is a topic often disputed among society, and has been prevalent since
ancient times. How individuals are educated and what allows the best conditions for
education are popular arguments. Philosophers like Bacon, Descartes, and countless
others have many a time pondered these questions. They all wanted to know how to
obtain genuine Truth or knowledge, and came up with metaphysical conclusions.
Although they mostly sought how to gain knowledge about how to get Gods blessing,
they also sought the best procedures to educate people specifically in terms of science.
They questioned whether our senses, mathematics, and even our own minds could be
trusted. These questions and conclusions helped to develop our education system and
led to many evolutions in science.
Platos allegory of the cave suggests that education is gained from personal
experience especially through the senses, specifically sight. It is implied that those who
have not experienced something for themselves the harder it is for them to understand.
This is shown through he slaves in the cave. When a slave is released, and experiences
the world outside of the cave and goes back to the other slaves, they do not realize who
he is or what he is saying. Once the slave left the cave, he left all the characteristic of
the cave rendering his familiarity to the other slaves non-existent. It is how the fourth
dimension was once explained to me when a third dimensional being sticks his finger
into a two dimensional world, the three dimensional beings only see a circle, a two
dimensional shape, because they cannot interpret higher dimensions. The slaves
interpret the free slave as they have everything else, as a distorted shadow dancing on
the wall.
In Descartes Meditations He established that the senses, mathematics, and all
things that cannot be doubted were key to knowledge. The famous statement As long
as I am thinking I can be sure I exist, suggests that Descartes believed that thought
was the most necessary component to education, or knowledge and understanding.
Descartes was a rationalist in his era, meaning he highly valued human reason.
Although he claims reason is not unique to humans, it is unique to understanding our
perceptions and helps us make educational conclusions. Without reason we wouldnt
have the ability to understand and would never be able to be educated.
Bacons Method helped establish the scientific methods we use today on a daily
basis, all over the world. This system has helped discover substantial scientific
knowledge and in result has granted development in education. Bacon believed that the
mind and senses were vital to discovering truth and knowledge. However he also
believed that you must rise from sensory experience to general causal principles, or to
experiment and repeat results many times to establish that the thesis is genuinely true.
Plato, Bacon, and Descartes agreed that knowledge could only be obtained by
the use of the mind or reason, and the senses. Without these one cannot grasp genuine
truth and therefore cannot be educated. Education is vital to the evolution of society,
and asking questions like those considered by Bacon and Descartes are an important
step to encouraging this evolution. It can be agreed that education is the most essential
thing in the lives of individuals.





















Works Cited
Ariew, Roger, and Eric Watkins. "Bacon, New Organon I, Aphorisms 1-3, 11-31, and 36-
46." Modern Philosophy: An Anthology. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998. Print.
Ariew, Roger, and Eric Watkins. "Descartes' Meditations." Modern Philosophy: An
Anthology. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998. Print.
"The Cave: An Adaptation of Plato's Allegory in Clay." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 05
Oct. 2014.
Plato, and Raymond Larson. The Republic. Arlington Heights, IL: AHM Pub., 1979.
Print.