Plato's ancient ideas regarding children upbringing, which he displays in his authentic piece of literature, the "Republic", continue to have strong influence on child rearing methods in our modern era. From this standpoint, the desired outcome of this paper is to analyze the various forms of applying Plato's principles of political-socialization of children that exist in the modern era, in correlation with their basic Platonic origins. Accordingly, Plato's ideas should be put under further focusing. In the "Republic", Plato introduces the importance of political-socialization of children as a means to attain and sustain his theoretical model of an ideal city. He further elaborates in depth how the individual spiritual and moral idealism are considered as gates leading to an perfect society. Plato specifies some basic absolutes on which his project is to founded, and upon which the education of future generations is to be based. The Platonic project is founded essentially on the motto of "justice", such that in a just city, every job should be accomplished in the most perfect way. Plato ties his notion of justice with the "principle of specialization", meaning that not only should every member of the society have one precise and defined task to accomplish, but also future generations will be assigned their specializations according to their natural and acquired abilities –as will be discussed later- .
In accordance to other models that existed during Plato's times, such as the Hindu Varna¹ or caste system of social hierarchy, the Platonic social hierarchy consists of three categories that he arranges from the bottom to the top, respectively, as follows: the working class, the "auxiliaries" (Military class), and the "guardians" (The ruling elite). He asserts that these three social classes are in absolute natural harmony with three types of souls he suggests, which are: The rational, spirited, and appetitive souls, respectively. At this point, Platonic children education is being put into practice, when Plato confirms his intention to indoctrinate children with his theory of metallic souls. This theory suggests that, harmoniously with nature, one metal is analogous to all individual souls belonging to one Platonic social class (such that gold is assigned to the guardians' souls, silver to the auxiliaries', and bronze and iron to the working class's). Hence, as an example, children belonging to the guardians class will be raised to believe in that natural has especially chosen them to rule. From this basis, Plato suggests that philosophical dialogue skills, or education in general should only be taught to the suitable people, and that otherwise the society might face serious moral challenges. In consequence, future guardians are acquired the capacity to rule. In analogy to his theory of metallic souls, Plato decides that a society achieves a state of justice whenever social classes function in harmony between themselves, and whenever each individuals behavior is governed by the type of soul dominating his/her social class: In this way, -according to Plato- each social class will be designed for one specific task, and the society as a whole will attain purity, since the metals will not mix. Summing up the above, but in other words, it is observed that due to the fact that Plato considers that education should be monopolized by the ruling class, the labor class is completely marginalized from any form of political participation.
Detailed codes of the Platonic approach of raising his city's future guardians are further elaborated in the "Republic". Plato mentions a sort of system to forecast potential rulers among children belonging to all classes equally: He allows for labor class children with special leadership potentials to be educated by the state equally with guardians, but forbids at the same time any sort of interference in political life by adult individuals belonging to the lower classes. The Platonic future guardians should be able to control their display of kindness and cruelty, upon necessity. Accordingly, Plato offers them an education package that balances their softness and savageness, through music and poetry², altogether with military and physical training. The "Republic" also includes strict and detailed codes regulating the allowed types of stories to be told to the guardians, as well as the permissible types of architecture, poetry, and artwork that should prevail. Plato's main criteria of deciding whether or not a story, a poem, or a piece of artwork is to be allowed in his city are based upon the question of whether or not these items teach virtues (e.g. honor, -fear of death, saying the truth, and imitating virtuous people) to his future rulers. In an attempt to feed the principle of rejection of physical pleasure to the ruling elite, Plato mentions that guardians should not wear gold, and be just satisfied with the fact that gold is in harmony with their spirits. In other words, guardians should be satisfied by another type of pleasure with their natural and acquired superior abilities. Guardians should also be taught that pedophilia³ is not allowed to pollute paternal love between a man and a boy in the Platonic city, being, unlike heterosexual intercourse, solely based on pleasure.
In the contemporary era, several social and political ideologies have indeed embraced neo-Platonic principles of children upbringing, both positively and negatively. First, some may argue that Plato's concern about teaching children to be just, virtuous, truth-tellers, and followers of good people- regardless of his methods of application- could be traced today in several respects. For example, it is observed that in many types of erotic or violent cinema movies, video cassettes, theater plays, music CDs, literature work, and artistic oeuvres, Parent Advisory Committees or organisms with similar functions ensure that slogans like "For adults only" or "Not for children under 18" are always displayable to the audience. On the other hand, others might oppose by arguing that lots of authoritarian regimes in the contemporary era, have been nurtured with the same Platonic strict codes of "dos and don'ts", that are not based on anything other than the state's own perceptions. This party might elaborate that in the Nazi and communist models for example, school children educational programs are monitored by the government in order to ensure that children will grow up to be good Nazis and communists. However, it is seen that the latter argument does not put into consideration the fact that the majority of families, societies, and states, today raise their children according to their own perceptions of right and wrong. As an example, Buddhist children are Buddhist, and because they were raised to be so, whether at home, in the surrounding community, from the local media, or at school. Therefore, it is more precise to say that every regime, every society, and every family, is seeking Plato's goals -and not necessarily his techniques- of good child raising, whether consciously or unconsciously.
What have always raised conservations about the "Republic", are Plato's means of putting his noble principles into practice. Many think that modern types of autocracies apply Plato's dictated codes of child rearing and social engineering. To begin, one can observe that the theory of metallic souls, condoning a natural superiority to social classes with golden souls and taught to the guardians, is indeed in harmony with the scientific Darwinist classification of races condoning a natural superiority of the Aryan race, and which was taught to the HJ4 . Furthermore, in his book "Brave New World", Aldous Huxley echoes some of Plato's education principles. He imagines a vigorously totalitarian community where citizens are produced inside "hatchery and conditioning centers", in prototypical uniform "batches" using "modern fertilization" techniques. Huxley applies the same rigid Platonic principle of specialization, when he shows that each batch of citizens is biologically identical, and is conditioned to be best suited to a certain unique social class, and to a highly specialized job as well. Huxley even goes with the embryos of future individuals making up his community all the way down to be equated with any common sort of production materials making up a mere input in the realm of a production line of future citizens. These ideas of materialization of citizens seem to be a modern version of Plato's assertion that social classes are in harmony with metals. The real difference between the Republic and the Brave New World is that in the latter, modern science is applied to feed political socialization plans. It is hence possible to admit that if the scientific progress of the Brave New World had been in Plato's hands, he would not have made a much different New World, Moreover, personal freedom is not even put into consideration, the state crushes individual freedoms, and social castes are rigid to the extent that a citizen’s fate—whether worker, auxiliary, guardian, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, or epsilon5 —is predetermined at early infancy, and no allowance is guaranteed for citizens to change their social classes upon maturity.
Most of the world's citizens today live under either authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes, and even democratic regimes, ironically, face serious problems in their application of concepts of justice and morality in their foreign policies. It could be further said that lots of regimes today, meet with Plato's Republic in a central point, which is the fact that the "strong" exploits and instrumentalized the "weak": If in the Republic the rulers' exploitation of the labor class under the law of specialization, -that prevents the latter party from ruling-, and the state exploitation of children by programming them on following its policies using different techniques, are all justified and given moral legitimacy, then today, wealthy people exploit poor people, great powers try to dominate weaker nations culturally, technologically, economically, and even militarily, all under proper justification and moral legitimacy. From this crucial standpoint, it is concluded that Plato has contradicted himself, and has adopted, yet advocated unconsciously the sophist doctrine stating that "justice is the advantage of the stronger" 6.
Bibliography:
"Hitler Youth". The History Place: 1999.
Huxley A. Brave New World. < http://huxley.net/bnw/index.html >.
Lahiri, R. K. "Caste System in Hinduism: A Historical and Analytical Approach ".
Plato. Republic. Translated by Grube G.M.A, and revised by Reeve C.D.C. Hackett : Indianapolis/Cambridge 1974
Endnotes:
[1]: The Varna is the Hindu social caste system, in which priests are the highest rank, then followed by warriors, then come tradesmen and craftsmen, and then at the bottom come the respect-less slaves. Refer to Lahiri.
[2]: "Music or "music and poetry" and "physical training" are more transliterations than translations of mousiké and gymnastiké, which have no English equivalents. It is clear from Plato's discussion, for example, that mousiké includes poetry and stories, as well as music proper, and that gymnastiké includes dance and training in warfare, as well as what we call physical training. The aims of mousiké and gymanstiké are characterized at 522a" (Qtd. in Plato, p.33).
[3]: Pedophilia is a Latin term given for sexual inclination towards children.
[4]: HJ stands for Hitlerjugend a.k.a. Hitler Youth. Refer to "Hitler Youth".
[5]: Huxley's social hierarchy consists of alphas on the top, then come betas, gammas, deltas, and epsilons in the bottom. Refer to Huxley's Brave New World, Chapter # 2.
[6]: Plato describes the discussion between Socrates and Thrasymachus the sophist in the beginning of the Republic. Although the opinion stating that "justice is the advantage of the stronger" was a sophist motto, Plato showed his advocacy to Socrates' rebuttal of this opinion.
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