Laws (Book II) by Plato
This post is part of my journey through the classic texts of Western civilization.
Book II continues the conversation regarding the purpose and components of education, particularly with a focus on music, which is "concerned with harmony and rhythm."
... education is the constraining and directing of youth towards that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of the eldest and best has agreed to be truly right.
There has been a liberal notion in recent years that suggests that the purpose of education is not to teach people what to think but rather how to think. To that I say, "what a silly idea," and Plato agrees, stating elsewhere that "The harmony of the soul, taken as a whole, is virtue; but the particular training in respect of pleasure and pain, which leads you always to hate what you ought to hate, and love what you ought to love from the beginning of life to the end, may be separated off; and, in my view, will be rightly called education."
Assuredly, a part of education must be teaching people how to think, but I would venture to claim that it is actually more important to teach people what to think. The blunt reality is that most men are average, perhaps not incapable of but probably without capacity/time to carefully investigate every thought and philosophy out there with the goal of coming to the truth. In the context of educating the youth, it is simply foolish to train a child as a "blank slate" who must grope for idea after idea, testing each to determine whether it holds merit or not. Why would we hide from him the millennia of human experience and thought on what is good, true, and beautiful? Let them be the guides that they are meant to be.
We gain insight from the above quote into the pedagogical effect of law. Plato states that the law "affirms" right reason and what the experience of the best has discerned to be right. So law is meant to affirm the good and consequently those raised under it will be directed by it towards the good. Later, Plato uses an example of enshrining into law "natural melodies" so that the tendency to seek the new does not corrupt these melodies:
... if a person can only find in any way the natural melodies, he may confidently embody them in a fixed and legal form. For the love of novelty which arises out of pleasure in the new and weariness of the old, has not strength enough to corrupt the consecrated song and dance, under the plea that they have become antiquated. At any rate, they are far from being corrupted in Egypt.
The careful reader will also note that Plato places emphasis upon the "best" men deciding what is the right and fair. Above we saw that it is the experience of the eldest and best that matters in coming to the conclusions of right reason, and an additional comment sees Plato also having the best and most virtuous men decide what is the fairest music. After all, why should we look to those who possess not the knowledge of the true, good, and beautiful to determine what is good and right? Their souls are not in tune with the good, so we should not expect their tastes to be.
But the pleasure must not be that of chance persons; the fairest music is that which delights the best and best educated, and especially that which delights the one man who is pre-eminent in virtue and education.
One final remark is that Plato does admit that the law is not irresistible. It is not a guarantee that the citizenry will be persuaded by reason towards that which the law is meant to guide them toward; this is not surprising considering that the citizenry by and large is made up of those ruled by their desires. Where the law and rational explanation cannot move men towards the good, it is the poet who can inspire through words and music.
... the true legislator will persuade, and, if he cannot persuade, will compel the poet to express, as he ought, by fair and noble words, in his rhythm, the figures, and in his melodies, the music of temperate and brave and in every way good men.