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[Coop and Dino singing]

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The “Allegory of the Cave” sounds kind of dark and ominous. [Girl reading allegory of the cave book]

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And, well, it should. In fact, this story literally begins in the dark. Bring your flashlight,

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kids.

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In this allegory…or “symbolic story”…Plato uses a long, extended metaphor to talk about [Plato talking about education]

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the importance of education.

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The story starts by telling us about a race of people who have been trapped in a cave

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all their life. Like we said: dark stuff. Not an upper.

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These prisoners are Plato’s metaphor for people who have never had a real education. [Arrows point to prisoners]

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Now, behind these people is a fire.

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And in front of the fire is a wall. A sort of…firewall. That joke will kill with computer

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nerds. [Computer nerd laughing at a joke]

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Anyway, on the fire-side of the wall are people holding up statues of various creatures, almost

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like a puppet show. [Prisoners holding statues of creatures]

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Because of how the prisoners are chained up, they can’t turn around. All they can see

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are the shadows on the wall in front of them. And so they assume these shadows are real

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creatures.

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But then the story starts to get really interesting. Plato says, “Now imagine one of the prisoners

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is released…”

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… and turns around. He would see the statues, and realize that the shadows of the statues [Prisoner looks at statues]

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are not the same as the statues themselves.

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So yeah…this is a metaphor for the first step in the learning process.

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Now…this prisoner thinks that the statues and the fire make up all of the real world.

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But then Plato drops another bomb. He has the freed prisoner dragged out of the cave… [Man drags prisoner out of a cave]

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… and into the sunlight.

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Here, the freed prisoner sees the real objects that the puppet-statues were based on…

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… and the sun in the sky that the fire was representing.

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And now at last he understands that the shadows were only imitations of the statues and the

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statues were only imitations of the actual things. His whole life has been one big scam. [Prisoner walking freely]

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He finally understands what reality really is. Mind: blown.

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In Plato’s extended metaphor, he now represents someone who has received an education.

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Plato believes it’s also his job to return to the cave and help free – or educate – the [Man returns to cave and lights turn on]

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others.

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He’s hinting that this is also the goal of education: to drag other people into the

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sunlight – or, in other words, bring students into the world of understanding. [Man drags boy into classroom]

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And hopefully there will be very little actual dragging involved…

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