The original utopia was Plato’s Republic. And in that hypothesized city-state one of the most important precepts for producing good citizens was proper education. Now, if you’ve ever read “The Republic” you know it’s literally gibberish. Plato proceeds from unsubstantiated statements to illogical conclusions throughout the argument he uses to design his state but one thing I think he was right about is the necessity for highly superior education. So, my republics will incorporate the most scientific and practical methods for educating and testing the young in order to maximize their future value as workers and citizens and to provide a worldview that would allow them to harmonize with their fellow citizens.
Now, since I am not an educator or a psychologist, I have no fixed ideas about methodology or even the content of this educational regimen. I will hazard a guess that mathematics should still have a very important place in these schools. I think thousands of years of western educational practices has proven the link between mathematical learning and general mental fitness. But beyond that I’ll say that identifying the curricula for the various levels and types of schooling is something that will be of the highest importance for these communities. And by no means do I intend for schooling to be strictly academic. Specific vocational training is something I see as extremely valuable for individuals of all types. Even a particle physicist or a concert pianist could benefit from knowing how to solder a component onto his computer motherboard or snake a bathtub drain. But all of this is tangential to the main reasons why education will be critical to making these communities successful.
The schools will identify the academic capabilities of the children and combining this with their interests the correct academic and vocational curricula will be provided as choices. This should maximize the probability for a successful citizen. But the schools will also educate children with the ethos and expectations that the community is based on. In this way the young will align themselves with the goals that are expected from them as members in the association. In this way, the likelihood that these later generations will fit in with the community is maximized.
As with every other aspect of the community, feedback from the testing will inform the goals and needs of the community. For instance, suppose the community is lacking in machinists. So, the forecasting will be used to increase the monetary incentives for machinists. And so forth for whatever other imbalances occur.
And education can also apply to other aspects of life. For instance, men and women need to find mates in order to produce the next generation. Education can include counseling on adapting to married life and even providing a dating service to locate compatible mates.
Now, Plato had his citizens indoctrinated with myths that justified their strange lifestyle. For instance, he did not want the nuclear family to interfere with the loyalties of his citizens and so the children were raised together as a pack. And he had stories that supposedly reinforced this lifestyle. I wouldn’t expect these optimized communities of mine to attempt to destroy families. On the contrary, I would expect them to do everything possible to prove that their lifestyle and community provide the best human environment possible.
I wonder what aspect of my optimal communities I’ll talk about next? Well, maybe that’s enough for a while. I better post on something else tomorrow.
Grouping children together to enhance their innate interests and capacities might sound cool, but I can see something of a kind of ” Brave New World” meets “Lord Of The Flies” as an end result. Plato had some beliefs that would be totally in line with pop culture, and some of the more main fringe liberal ideas such as it take a village to raise children, children are property of the state, families are symbolic of divided loyalties. We don’t need to be divided by the state we do an outstanding job of self segregation by not only skin tone,… Read more »
I’ve always preferred Aristotle’s way of looking at the world over Plato’s. All of Plato’s dialogs consist of straw men being knocked over with illogical arguments. When building utopias never leave the design of educating children to men who never got married. There’s a reason for their bachelor status.