Education And The Circular Ruins

There appears to be a type of anxiety today that involves education, but what is education? Education, by definition, is “a body of knowledge acquired while being educated” (“Education,” def. 1.2), but what is “a body of knowledge?” Just like education, knowledge can be many things, but I would argue that knowledge is a virtual concept that exists as part of a virtual world known as education. Actual knowledge is formed using the ideals of others, and educating is the process in which students are introduced to these ideas. Here I will focus on education in terms of what students wish to gain from school verses what teachers wish to give students as well as how the ways teachers present information shape students. As part of this exercise, I will try to place the teacher and student in Plato’s cave to further explain knowledge and the relationship between students and teachers. I wish to start my explanation of education with The Circular Ruins. This short story holds both the complex relationship between teacher and student. This short story follows a man I will refer to as the Dreamer through his creation of a man and the discovery of the fact that he himself was a creation of another man. During part of the story, the Dreamer lectures at a “illusory college” (Borges 47). In this college, he is confronted by two different types of students: those “who passively

With this information, I would like to situate the Dreamer and his students inside Plato’s Cave. At this point, I wish to place the students in chains and watching the shadows because of the fact they are not questioning the information they are given, but I find placing the Dreamer in the cave difficult because of the way he is presented in the story, so I would like to now look at the Dreamer as a teacher