Coming to uni, I didn’t have a clue what Philosophy was. It wasn’t a subject ever covered from the high school I came from.

This all changed when we began our Philosophy module with John. I soon became aware of some the key concepts and began to challenge my own thinking.

We were introduced to key philosophers and their views on education including; Dewey, and his view that immaturity is important in education as it allows the individual to grow; Plato, and his view that the soul is immortal and that we do not learn anything instead simply we recall information and also that error is a very important part of education; Aristotle, and his view that practical subjects, for example music, are just as important to the holistic learning and development of an individual as the scientific ones; Gramsci, and his view that there is no unity between school and life resulting in education becoming like a tool; Paulo Freire, his view that education is an ongoing activity due to the human being being incomplete; Maxine Green, and her view that today’s teachers must be aware of their student’s needs; Alfred Schutz, and his view that our actual experiences aren’t merely retentions and recollections and himself, and his view that education beyond education is an invitation to estrangement.

Plato’s story ‘Allegory of the Cave’ was really interesting and helped my understanding of the main philosophical questions. In his seventh book of the republic Plato tackled the philosophical question of ‘What is reality?’ In the story Plato imagined a group of people born in a cave who couldn’t escape and could only see the shadows of the people, animals that pass the opening of the cave. This builds up their reality of the real world. However, one day one of the people escape the cave but at first is blinded by the natural light. Over a course of a few days, their eyes adjust to the light and they begin to experience the outside world and return to the cave to tell the others that their reality is just a projection. However, without the others experiencing the outdoor world then the story is just a projection. This develops the theory that you can have a projection of something that isn’t it’s true form.

I feel these philosophy lessons has helped my understanding greatly. I now feel confident in writing about philosophy for my VIVA which, at the start, before the lessons, I was dreading.