Plato's Educational Legacy: Selection by Ability, the Role of Teachers and a Balanced Education

Plato’s writing on education is spread across several dialogues, mainly the Republic and the Laws, with important remarks in the Meno. It is often summed up as a list of principles, but the dialogues do not give one. This page covers three ideas that his ancient texts support and that later educators have most often drawn on: selection by ability, the teacher’s role as a guide, and a balanced education of body and mind. It is a short overview, not a complete inventory of his educational thought.

Did Plato think education should be based on ability rather than birth?

Partly. In the Republic the guardian class is chosen and trained by ability and not by inheritance. Socrates tells the “noble lie” that citizens have gold, silver, bronze or iron in their souls, and says that a child born in one class who has a different metal in him must be moved to the class that fits his nature (415a-c). Women with the right natures are to receive the same training as men and serve as guardians (451c-457b), which was a radical proposal in Athens.

The qualification matters. Plato’s scheme is not universal schooling. Only those selected as guardians go through the long course of study, and the producing class is not shown receiving it. The Republic seems to assume that slaves exist (433d mentions them), though it says little about them and gives no program for their education. So “equal access for all” is a modern gloss: what Plato proposes is selection by natural ability within a free citizen body, with unusual openness to women. See the role of women in the Republic.

What is the teacher’s role for Plato?

Plato’s most famous image is that education is not putting sight into blind eyes but turning the whole soul around toward what is real (518b-d). The teacher’s job is therefore to direct a person’s attention, and the learner has to do the looking. This sits alongside the idea in the Meno (81a-86c) that learning is a kind of recollection, in which Socrates draws a geometric truth out of a slave boy by questioning him alone. See recollection and education.

Two corrections to common summaries:

• Plato does not set out a classroom method of “Socratic dialogue for everyone”. In the Republic he says dialectic is to be postponed until about the age of thirty, because young people use argument as a game and become cynical (537b-539d). Mathematics comes first, and the full course runs to about fifty (537b-540a).
• In the Laws the state appoints a supervisor of education to oversee teachers and curriculum (765d-766b). That is a state-run model and not a free-form mentoring one.

Plato also treats the early years as a time for play. In the Republic (536e-537a) he says that a free person should not learn anything as a slave to compulsion, and that children should be brought up in lessons that feel like play, which helps teachers see each child’s bent. The Laws (643b-d) makes a similar point. See the role of play.

What does a balanced education mean in Plato?

In the Republic the early education of the guardians has two parts, music (which includes poetry, story and the arts) and gymnastics (376e-412b). Plato argues that gymnastics is not only for the body, and music is not only for the soul: each affects the other. He warns that training in gymnastics alone makes a person hard and savage, and music alone makes him soft, and says the two should be combined so that spirit and the love of learning are tuned like the strings of an instrument (410b-412a). The result is the harmonious character he ties to justice in the soul. See the person with a soul in harmony and gymnastics and diet in the ideal state.

Plato’s idea of balance is therefore not a general call for “well-rounded” students. It serves his aim of producing guardians whose spirit is trained by gymnastics and whose reason is trained by music, mathematics and, finally, dialectic.

What is the legacy of these ideas?

The Academy Plato founded in Athens was a school for research and teaching in mathematics and philosophy, and it lasted for centuries. Later educators have drawn on the ideas above: the link between education and character, the importance of early habits and play, and the combination of physical and intellectual training. Plato’s critics have objected to his state control of schooling and his censorship of poetry. See why Plato’s educational legacy matters for educators.

Quick answer

• The page covers three aspects, not ten.
• Plato selects guardians by ability and admits women, but the program is not universal.
• Teaching is a turning of the soul, with dialectic delayed until the age of thirty.
• Balanced education means music plus gymnastics, tuned together.