Education

Use in the book

Socrates’ inventory of letters, lyre-playing and wrestling at 106e is not a claim that Alcibiades has learned nothing at all. It establishes the limited domains in which instruction can be identified. When political advice is proposed, the pertinent teacher or discovery of the required standard cannot be supplied. “Uneducated” at 118b and 123d therefore marks a failure relative to the intended task and its greatest objects, not the absence of literacy or every practical ability.

Alcibiades initially draws a complacent conclusion from the same diagnosis applied to politicians. If his competitors are amateurs, why undergo the labour of training? The athletic comparison is already his: educated competitors would have to be approached like athletes after appropriate preparation. Socrates preserves the agonistic framework but changes the rivals. A would-be naval commander must look beyond his own crew to opposing leaders; an Athenian leader must consider Spartan and Persian rulers. Learning what admits learning and practising what needs practice then appear as requirements of the very greatness Alcibiades desires.

The foreign education passage dramatizes sustained preparation. The royal child is attended from birth, learns riding and hunting at seven, and receives four selected tutors at twice seven. The point is not an independently verified schedule for every historical prince, but a contrast between coherent formation and the casual appointment of Zopyrus. Socrates also says that an Athenian lover may be the one person who takes a young man’s education seriously.

At 124c Socrates includes himself in the need to be educated; the inquiry becomes joint. At 127d–e the admission of shameful ignorance is treated as timely rather than hopeless: Alcibiades’ age is appropriate for recognizing the problem, whereas discovering it at fifty would make care difficult. This is an encouragement within the dramatic situation, not a scientific age-limit on learning.

The final precaution before politics is “exercise first” and learn what one must know, going in with antidotes against corruption. Training is thus not merely preparation to defeat competitors. Its later purpose is protection of the person who will encounter public desire and power. The closing promise begins this work without narrating a completed education.

Places to read

1. 106e–107a2Named school subjects establish real but limited competence.
2. 118b–119c23Political ignorance and the temptation to rely on natural superiority are exposed.
3. 119d–120c2Competition supplies the demand for learning, practice and preparation.
4. 121d–122b2The staged upbringing of the Persian heir contrasts with Zopyrus.
5. 124b–124d2Both interlocutors are included in the need for care and education.
6. 127d–127eRecognition at the present age makes improvement possible.
7. 132a–132bPreparation becomes protection against civic corruption.

Translation in this edition

The translation distinguishes “train” for askein from “exercise” for gymnazesthai. Both carry bodily associations, but neither should be reduced to literal athletics where the context is political and ethical preparation.

ἀπαίδευτος

Attested: ἀπαίδευτοι (apaideutoi; 119b). Uneducated for the task, of political actors rather than necessarily people unable to read. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀπαίδευτος. See Education and training.

ἀσκέω

Attested: ἀσκεῖν (askein; 119b). To train or practise, the labour Alcibiades initially thinks unnecessary. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀσκέω. See Education and training.

ἄσκησις

Attested: ἀσκήσεως (askēseōs; 120b). Training or practice, required in matters that need it. Lexical identification: lemma: ἄσκησις. See Education and training.

γυμνάζω

Attested: Γύμνασαι (gymnasai; 132b). To exercise or train; the command here is preparatory learning before public affairs. Lexical identification: lemma: γυμνάζω. See Education and training.

ἡλικία

Attested: ἡλικίαν (hēlikian; 127e). Age or time of life, treated as making the present recognition of ignorance timely. Lexical identification: lemma: ἡλικία. See Education and training.

παιδεία

Attested: παιδείαν (paideian; 122b). Education or formation, particularly the contrasted upbringing of political rivals. Lexical identification: lemma: παιδεία. See Education and training.

παιδεύω

Attested: παιδευθῆναι (paideuthēnai; 118b). To educate or form; Alcibiades is rushing into politics before receiving the relevant formation. Lexical identification: lemma: παιδεύω. See Education and training.

παρασκευή

Attested: παρασκευὴν (paraskeuēn; 120c). Preparation or equipment; Socrates' ironic exhortation exposes how absurd it is to enter politics without every needed preparation. Lexical identification: lemma: παρασκευή. See Education and training.

Use in the book

Hipparchus’ educational programme is made the motive for his cultural acts. Bringing Homer and poets to Athens is supposed to make citizens as good as possible, so that he may rule over them in that condition. The syntax does not merely say that he waits until good citizens exist and then governs. Improvement and government are linked within the purpose of the activity.

The methods are varied: compulsory order among rhapsodes, a ship to collect Anacreon, fees and gifts for Simonides, and inscribed sayings for country people. Education thus includes organisation, patronage, reading and personal attendance, rather than a single classroom technique. The distribution of Herms extends the invitation, while the expectation that readers will come in for more keeps further instruction attached to the cultural centre.

The return of παιδεύειν in the assassination story changes the scale. Aristogeiton has educated one man, Harmodius, and prides himself on that achievement. Hipparchus has sought to educate a citizen body. Yet both public and private educators depend on recognition, and the transfer of admiration to Hipparchus becomes destructive for his rivals. Education is not merely a benevolent label in the story; it can become a possession on which prestige and resentment are founded.

The surrounding dialogue offers a third kind of educational encounter, although Socrates never labels the whole conversation a lesson in the same explicit way. He tests definitions and permits revision, but the companion feels deceived and ultimately compelled. Comparing that encounter with the narrative asks what successful education would require beyond assembling culture, winning admiration or extracting agreement. The text leaves this as a problem for interpretation, not a completed educational theory.

Places to read

1. 228cβουλόμενος παιδεύειν τοὺς πολίτας — The ruler’s stated intention is citizen education.
2. 228dποιήματα καὶ ἐπιδείγματα — The verses are both poems and specimens of wisdom.
3. 228eγεῦμα λαμβάνοντες — Reading supplies a taste that should prompt further study.
4. 229cἐπὶ τῷ παιδεῦσαι ἄνθρωπον — Aristogeiton takes pride in having educated a person.

Translation in this edition

At 228c4 Burnet prints παιδεύειν, which the supplied apparatus attributes to B; it reports πείθειν, “persuade,” for TW. That alternative would make the immediate statement about influencing citizens rather than educating them, although education remains explicit later. This is a report of the edition’s apparatus, not a fresh collation. “Plotting in turn to educate” at 228d preserves a potentially unsettling choice of verb instead of smoothing it into uncomplicated benevolence.

Use in the book

Socrates presents education of oneself and one's kin as an exceptionally serious subject for counsel (122b). The addition of oneself prevents the father's concern from being restricted to the technical management of a dependent child. The person seeking advice also has something to examine and learn. Yet the passage does not formulate a curriculum for adult self-education; its immediate effect is to justify careful deliberation.

Theages has already received the ordinary instruction of boys from “fine and good” fathers: letters, music, wrestling, and the other contests (122e). Socrates therefore asks what knowledge remains missing and appropriately requires paternal provision (123a). The question is not whether the boy is wholly uneducated. It is how the desired additional wisdom relates to education he demonstrably possesses.

That distinction matters throughout. The sophists profess to educate young men (127e), and Socrates denies knowing their blessed and fine subjects, except for his paradoxically small field of love (128b). The question of further education cannot be settled merely by establishing that someone has a respected teaching occupation. Likewise, the reputation of eminent statesmen does not settle their ability to pass their competence to sons or pupils.

At 130c Aristides says he flees anyone he perceives to be educated. Here the perfect participle describes a person's acquired standing and capacity, as intimidating to someone who has lost confidence in argument. His next statement is even more disruptive to ordinary educational expectations: he never learned anything from Socrates, although he improved in Socrates' presence (130d). Education and benefit are consequently related questions rather than interchangeable descriptions of one proven mechanism.

The final alternative, to be educated by someone who controls the benefit he gives (130e), returns to the practical distinction between a responsible choice and a guaranteed result. Socrates leaves open whether his association should be chosen over such a provider. A lexicon should preserve this unresolved comparison rather than supply a familiar Platonic theory of paideia from another dialogue as the answer given here.

Places to read

1. 122bπερὶ παιδείας καὶ αὑτοῦ καὶ τῶν αὑτοῦ οἰκείων — Education concerns self and kin
2. 122eἐδιδάξατό σε … καὶ ἐπαίδευσεν — The father has already arranged teaching and education
3. 122eγράμματά τε καὶ κιθαρίζειν καὶ παλαίειν — The specified basic accomplishments
4. 122eτὴν ἄλλην ἀγωνίαν — The remaining athletic training or contests
5. 127eπαιδεύειν ἐπαγγέλλονται — Others profess an ability to educate
6. 130cπεπαιδευμένον — An educated person now intimidates Aristides
7. 130eπαιδεύεσθαι — The option of receiving education elsewhere

Translation in this edition

Note 6 compares the educational sequence in Protagoras 325d–326c. That parallel clarifies the conventional curriculum, but does not make the two passages identical. Burnet retains καὶ ἐπαίδευσεν at 122e, though the apparatus records Cobet's proposed deletion; the translation accordingly includes both teaching and education.

Contests — ἀγωνία (agōnia)

ἀγωνία (agōnia)

Contests. Other athletic exercises or contests, not the father's anxiety. Attested: ἀγωνίαν (122e). Education of oneself and one's kin.

Educated — παιδεύειν (paideuein) · ἐπαίδευσεν (122e).

παιδεύειν (paideuein)

Educated. The father has already provided ordinary education. Attested: ἐπαίδευσεν (122e). Education of oneself and one's kin.

Have been educated — παιδεύειν (paideuein)

παιδεύειν (paideuein)

Have been educated. Other boys of the relevant social standing provide the comparison. Attested: πεπαίδευνται (122e). Education of oneself and one's kin.

Education — παιδεία (paideia)

παιδεία (paideia)

Education. The subject of the consultation, extending to oneself and one's kin. Attested: παιδείας (122b). Education of oneself and one's kin.

Had taught — διδάσκεσθαι (didaskesthai)

διδάσκεσθαι (didaskesthai)

Had taught. The father's causative middle role in having the boy instructed. Attested: ἐδιδάξατό (122e). Education of oneself and one's kin.

Kin — οἰκεῖος (oikeios)

οἰκεῖος (oikeios)

Kin. One's own people whose education also demands serious deliberation. Attested: οἰκείων (122b). Education of oneself and one's kin.

Letters — γράμματα (grammata)

γράμματα (grammata)

Letters. Literacy is one specified component of the boy's education. Attested: γράμματά (122e). Education of oneself and one's kin.

More divine — θεῖος (theios)

θεῖος (theios)

More divine. The comparative elevates education of self and kin above other subjects of deliberation. Attested: θειοτέρου (122b). Education of oneself and one's kin.

Of oneself — ἑαυτοῦ (heautou)

ἑαυτοῦ (heautou)

Of oneself. The reflexive makes the adviser's or deliberator's own education part of the concern. Attested: αὑτοῦ (122b). Education of oneself and one's kin.

Play the cithara — κιθαρίζειν (kitharizein)

κιθαρίζειν (kitharizein)

Play the cithara. The musical accomplishment already taught. Attested: κιθαρίζειν (122e). Education of oneself and one's kin.

Wrestle — παλαίειν (palaiein)

παλαίειν (palaiein)

Wrestle. One of the bodily accomplishments already taught. Attested: παλαίειν (122e). Education of oneself and one's kin.

Advice is said to be sacred (contextual phrase)

122b: λέγεταί γε συμβουλὴ ἱερὸν χρῆμα εἶναι. “Advice is indeed said to be a sacred thing.” The passive “is said” marks an appeal to a received saying. Chrēma is “thing” in this expression, not the money denoted by chrēmata in the father's account. Socrates extends the saying to education without claiming that every recommendation thereby possesses divine authority. See Advice and Education.

Use in the book

The Phaedo narrative says that the soul takes only its education and nurture into Hades. These can help or harm it at the beginning of its journey. The association with nurture gives education a lasting formative role: what matters after death is the condition acquired by the soul, rather than possessions left behind.

Places to read

1. I.49.58.3Education and nurture accompany the soul on its journey after death.

Translation in this edition

“Education” should retain this broader sense of formation. Distinguish paideia from the accompanying term for nurture or upbringing.

Use in the book

The early account puts education beside philosophy and bodily constitution among sources of happiness, with an explicit reported-author qualification. The Malebranche discussion concerns bodily reward and punishment as means of teaching duty. The retrospective praise of old education then emphasizes masters’ lives, mutual respect and childhood piety rather than instruction alone. Finally a self-correction urges nourishment of the principle of mind and life rather than hasty development, which ruins the germ. The organic metaphor makes education a care for what enables growth, not merely acceleration.

Places to read

1. I, p. 38, entry 3, ¶1Education is one cause among several in a reported account of happiness.
2. I, p. 436, entry 2, ¶1Bodily incentives are examined through Malebranche’s advice.
3. II, p. 831, entry 6, ¶1Moral example and respect are distinguished from instruction.
4. II, p. 866, entry 5, ¶2Hasty development is opposed to nourishment of the germ.

Translation in this edition

The English translation keeps education distinct from instruction and principle distinct from development. It preserves Malebranche’s attribution, the limitation to bodily pleasure and pain, and the conflicting abbreviated book references without silently reconciling them.

Childhood in education

French: enfance.

Childhood receives piety and respect through the perceived example of teachers; this retrospective valuation does not certify every feature of the old education as historical fact.

Places to read: II, p. 831, entry 6, ¶1.

Use in the book

Bad education does not simply fail to provide information: it can eclipse an existing apprehension of good. The child learns what adults praise and loses what they never discuss. The university supplies another kind of formation, introducing arts and sciences that later become intelligible as resources of felicity. Traherne carefully distinguishes seeing those subjects then from understanding their full relevance afterwards. His ideal education would join the child’s openness to mature inquiry, teaching the worth and use of knowledge rather than making scholarship an end in itself.

Places to read

1. III.7The first light of infancy is overwhelmed by an education governed by wrong desires.
2. III.8The narrator imagines how easily a child could have been taught the true riches of nature.
3. III.36University learning supplies a second education whose relation to felicity is understood retrospectively.

In this edition

“Education” here is broader than attendance at school or university. The passage’s teachers may be parents, companions, conventional talk, or the objects that a community prizes.

Use in the book

The February 1833 critique is severe but constructive. French colleges have supplied scraps of Latin and Greek together with boredom because they detach literary works from the civilization that explains them. The remedy is not abandoning ancient authors. It is teaching their relations to landscape, religion, philosophy, and the arts, so that each can interpret the others. The living whole should awaken love of learning rather than mere endurance of the letter.

The June 1835 entry extends the charge from intellectual method to moral formation. After years in school, he finds himself without even the beginnings of inward strength or guidance in conduct. Intellectual discernment has progressed more rapidly than the ability to act differently. Education fails when it cultivates judgments without the strength to live by them.

Between these critiques, the country appears as another school. Free and receptive idleness produces growth without books or laborious study. This alternative does not settle the practical problem: the Latin retained from college becomes the means by which Guérin earns his living teaching others. The system he condemns has supplied a limited resource, while the labor of transmitting it consumes time needed for thought.

Education thus concerns an unequal exchange between received knowledge, self-development, and livelihood. Its ideal is integrated formation; its reported reality is fragmentation, incomplete moral growth, and the paradoxical usefulness of what has otherwise disappointed him.

Places to read

1. 6 February 1833 · ¶1The main educational critique opposes severed extracts to reciprocal interpretation within a civilization.
2. 4 August 1834 · ¶1Unforced receptive life in the country produces growth outside formal study.
3. 30 April 1835 · ¶3The small residue of school Latin supports teaching, while the work drains the time available for thought.
4. 4 June 1835 · ¶1The later critique asks why schooling has not taught inward strength or transformed moral conduct.

Translation in this edition

“Collège” in the supplied English is generally rendered through “schools” or “school education.” It should not automatically be read as an American undergraduate college. “Éducations morales” shifts the complaint to formation of character, not another branch of literary instruction.

Use in the book

The schools teach children how to recognise class before the adult world requires them to move safely within it. This is practical geometry: the differences between angles must become available to touch or sight. Yet the distribution of methods is itself a class system. Poor children learn Feeling early; wealthy children spend years acquiring the more demanding skill of sight recognition, which the society values more highly. What later appears natural refinement has required protected time and substantial resources.

The most disturbing lesson is also the most elementary. Living Isosceles, chained and deprived of rights, constitute an “Alphabet of angles.” Their bodies are made into the material through which middle-class children acquire intelligence. The school does not merely reproduce an existing prejudice; it trains perception through an encounter in which a subordinated person counts as an object. The teaching of recognition is founded on a failure to recognise humanity.

The discussion of feeding these specimens adopts the language of economy. A system which replaces them monthly is praised for accuracy and incidental population reduction. Abbott gives the narrator neither a change of voice nor an explicit admission that the topic has become atrocious. The institutional calm is part of the argument: orderly explanation can make exploitation sound like a technical choice between budgets.

University training presents a different danger. A graduate's transformation is described as a new birth, while a noble failure becomes a person with no viable position above or below. The proposed answer is lifelong imprisonment or painless death. The contrast exposes a system that invests enormously in selected pupils but cannot tolerate outcomes that fail its categories. Education and hereditary rank reinforce each other until a failed credential becomes grounds for eliminating the candidate.

One analogy needs particular care. The narrator compares the suppression of Feeling with discouraging deaf children from signing in order to impose speech and lip-reading. The analogy records a coercive educational judgement; it is not evidence that signed language prevents intellectual or linguistic development. It belongs to the same question raised by the schools generally: who decides which human capacities count as education, and what is lost when one method becomes compulsory?

Places to read

1. §523“an ascending scale or Alphabet of angles”
2. §523“Fettered immovably”
3. §523“expense is the truest economy”
4. §6234“higher Seminaries of an exclusive character”
5. §6234“a new birth”
6. §6234“extinguished by a painless death”

In this edition

Notes 61–6323 explain object teaching and school-board politics; notes 69–7423456 distinguish Wentbridge's Cambridge features, the oralist controversy and the examination's continental terminology. These annotations contextualise the satire and, at note 70, expressly distinguish modern recognition of sign languages from the narrator's assumptions.

Alphabet of angles

A graded series of bodily examples used to teach the discrimination of angles, analogous to letters used in learning to read. The educational metaphor conceals the fact that its smallest signs are living people confined as teaching apparatus. Printed form: Alphabet of angles (§ 523). See Education and schools.

Cheap system

The educational arrangement that keeps specimens alive by feeding them for longer use. The narrator associates it with elected School Boards, but prefers the more expensive replacement system because he regards worn angles and surplus population as costs to be reduced. Printed form: cheap system (§ 523). See Education and schools.

Endowment

Funds or property permanently assigned to support an institution or office. The complexity of recognising moving nobles is said to justify rich professorial endowments, tying academic prestige and expenditure to the social needs of the elite. Printed form: endowments (§ 6234). See Education and schools.

Fettered

Bound with restraints so that movement is impossible. The capitalised occurrence begins the sentence describing classroom specimens: immobilisation protects pupils while rendering the human teaching material wholly subject to institutional use. Printed form: Fettered (§ 523). See Education and schools.

Mercurial versatility

Quick, lively adaptability. It describes the young Tradesman’s early practical abilities, which failed aristocratic students lack along with the trained powers of graduates, leaving them excluded from the advantages of either class. Printed form: mercurial versatility (§ 6234). See Education and schools.

Prosecution

Sustained pursuit or carrying through of an undertaking, not criminal proceedings. The prosecution of Sight Recognition requires time and money, identifying the material resources concealed beneath the language of a naturally superior art. Printed form: prosecution (§ 6234). See Education and schools.

Rustication

Temporary exclusion from a university, traditionally a sending away into the country. Wentbridge imposes it for a first act of Feeling, turning a familiar academic punishment into enforcement of the elite’s preferred sensory habits. Printed form: Rustication (§ 6234). See Education and schools.

Seminary

Educational establishments, not necessarily institutions for training clergy. The higher Seminaries provide exclusive early schooling for aristocratic children, distinguishing their preparation in Sight Recognition from the tactile instruction of public elementary schools. Printed form: Seminaries (§ 6234). See Education and schools.

Specimens

Living low-angle Isosceles treated as representative examples for schoolchildren to handle. The impersonal scientific label effaces their personhood, preparing the narrator’s calculation of the costs and advantages of feeding them or letting them starve. Printed form: Specimens (§ 523). See Education and schools.

Expense is the truest economy (contextual phrase)

“expense is the truest economy” (§ 523)

The maxim ordinarily defends paying more for better quality or greater durability. The Square applies it to replacing living classroom specimens instead of keeping them fed. Frequent replacement preserves accurate angles for the pupils to handle and, in his account, slightly reduces the supposedly redundant Isosceles population. A recognisable household principle thus carries the reader across an appalling shift in what counts as an expense and what counts as a benefit. Neither the specimen’s life nor its suffering appears as a cost in the calculation. The cheap system is not innocent either, since it still confines people as apparatus, but the narrator’s preferred economy makes their deaths an additional advantage. The smooth proverbial ending presents that judgment as practical wisdom. See Education and schools, Feeling and touch, and Artisan and soldier.

Perfect propriety in Polygonal society (contextual phrase)

“to comport oneself with perfect propriety in Polygonal society” (§ 6234)

The alliterative phrase joins respectable conduct to a particular bodily and social class. Comport oneself means behave or carry oneself; propriety requires knowing how to move among high-ranking figures without collisions or unwelcome requests to touch them. The Square concludes that one should ideally be a Polygon oneself. This is more than a joke about snobbery: prolonged schooling and habitual practice give the rich an informational advantage over a visitor who cannot interpret their changing outlines. The apparently effortless grace of superior breeding has expensive conditions. The narrator’s own difficulty is useful evidence, since he possesses education and respectability yet still feels outmatched. Membership in the fashionable circle depends on embodied training that formal knowledge alone cannot supply. See Recognition by sight, Polygon, and Education and schools.

A bi-lingual and bi-mental existence (contextual phrase)

“a kind of bi-lingual, and I may almost say bi-mental, existence” (§ 1223)

The qualifying phrases make the narrator sound cautious while he describes a profound division between public and private thought. Men use love, duty, and moral judgment in speaking to women, then replace those terms with calculations of benefit, necessity, and fitness among themselves. Bi-mental suggests that this division cannot remain a harmless change of vocabulary: boys must acquire incompatible ways of explaining action and learn when to display each. The Square’s stated worry is the injury to male intellectual strength, although his examples also expose systematic deception of women. His fear that a mother might learn the logical dialect reveals how much the arrangement depends on restricted literacy and controlled transmission. The language policy therefore preserves authority by making knowledge unevenly available within the household. See Language and gender, Women, and Education and schools.