A Study Of Plato 's Nationalist Educational Thoughts

As one of the three famous philosophers in ancient Greece, Plato’s ideology involves many fields, for example, philosophy, political science, ethics, education, law, literature and many other areas. And in these academic fields, Plato made pioneering historical contributions. These thoughts of Plato have been intertwined together and reflected in his magnificent writings.The Republic is one of achievement writings in his mature period. In the The Republic, Plato regarded education as the country’s most important thing, and he also regarded it as the fundamental means to realize the country’s political purpose, and constructed the educational ideological system which bears obvious national characteristic.Plato’s nationalism educational ideology is an important part of his whole ideological system, it was based on the theory of the concept of objective idealism philosophy as well as social and political views which protected slaveholders’ autocracy and reflected nationalism.The source of Plato’s nationalism educational ideology is complex. It was related to the social background of Plato’s whole life when the state of slavery declined and dramatically changed. It was also related to Plato’s class origin as well as the educational and political influence,especially his personal experience of political practice.At the same time, it was influenced by the two different aspects of the education situation and practical experience of Sparta whose education focuses on “making citizens subject to the state” and Athens whose education focuses on “cultivating the comprehensive development citizens”.On the basis of the theory of hierarchical human nature, Plato strictly limited the education object to the broad scope of security class. Then, the purpose of education was divided into two levels, the primary purpose was to train qualified city guards, and the advanced purpose was to develop the philosopher-kings who represent the highest rulers of the state. For Plato, to accomplish the goal of education needs a long and difficult process of education and training.According to the different of the order of age and the content of education, Plato divided the process into two stages: during the primary stage, the guardians reach to the perceptual cognition mainly by music and physical education, and during the advanced stage, they reach to the rational cognition mainly through learning geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, dialectical,and so on, and coupled with many years of practical experience to eventually grow up to the highest rulers. In this process, Plato put forward to unifying planning and comprehensive controlling the education activities by national force, regulated the practice of education with the help of virtue education and the law, and exerted the education’s effects by guiding and inculcation method in order to help realize the purpose of nationalism education.Throughout the Plato’s whole nationalism educational ideological system, the educational function of building prosperous country which it reflects brought about positive influences to enhance national strength and safeguard national interests, the comprehensive and harmonious concept of education content which it reflects promoted the western humanism tradition’s development and practice, the educational concept of lifelong development which it reflects promoted modern lifelong education theory’s formation and development, these concepts are still vigorously practiced in many countries now. But at the same time, being influenced by the original intention of the construction of the society in which the aristocracy of the slave owners was maintained, and the educational system and the content design for cultivating the supreme rulers of the country, the Plato’s ideological system has a negative impact on the later generations to some extent, even some scholars have interpreted it as the origin of modern totalitarianism theory.