Up@dawn 2.0

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Plato's Parenting

I think Plato revealed some interesting but insightful views about education and parenting that I find my views identifying closely with. "In Greek, our word for play is paidia, and the word for education is paideia, and it is very natural and right that these words should be entangled at the root."His words make it more clear to me that in education, there is a strong correlation between work and play, and it's important that they coexist for an ultimately effective outcome. I think what he fails to recognize, however, is that play itself is not what promotes good education, but rather the feeling attached to it. We should certainly not spend our entire education playing around, but the pleasure we experience through play is the same kind of pleasure that we must feel when learning. When we are uninterested in a particular study, its information is often the first to be discarded from our cognitive storage. When we find pleasure in learning, we find value and understanding in otherwise trivial information. This genuine interest in learning is what characterizes Thumos, the love of truth. If you always seek the truth, and find pleasure in your search, true intellect, rather than memorization, will arise. This is why "warriors parents" who plan our every move and force us into monotonous tasks cause an attitude of misery toward our studies to arise. It's important to grant enough freedom to children that they can develop interests and talents through their own determination and satisfaction.

(H2)

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