Word: plato
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...curriculum, and in 1980 Stanford inaugurated an elaborate system of seven tracks that would carry every student through the basics of Western civilization. "A miracle has happened among Stanford undergraduates," Charles Lyons, director of the Western-culture program, proudly told the faculty senate last spring. "They do talk about Plato at dinner and about Shakespeare on the lawns...
...idea that education has a basically social purpose derives more or less from Plato. In his Republic, the philosopher portrayed a Utopia governed by an intellectual elite specially trained for that purpose. This form of education was both stern and profoundly conservative. Children who attempt innovations, warned Socrates, acting as Plato's narrator, will desire a different sort of life when they grow up to be men, with other institutions and laws. And this "is full of danger to the whole state." To prevent any innovations, Socrates forthrightly demanded censorship so that students could not "hear any casual tales...
...contrast to Plato's claim for the social value of education, a quite different idea of intellectual purposes was propounded by the Renaissance humanists. Intoxicated with their rediscovery of the classical learning that was thought to have disappeared during the Dark Ages, they argued that the imparting of knowledge needs no justification-religious, social, economic or political...
Daniel Boorstin, historian and Librarian of Congress: The Dialogues of Plato, The Travels of Marco Polo, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, War and Peace, Francis Parkman's France and England in North America...
...reflects on his college days, on how a young student at the University of Indiana became hypnotized by the classics and linguistics. "Quite honestly, I drifted into it. It just seemed to go well." He says he was not one of those who grew up reading Homer and Plato and indeed found himself lacking in his knowledge of the basic classics when he came to Harvard as a graduate student...