The relationship of "Allegory of the Cave" to learning and education. The "Allegory of the Cave" is Plato's attempt to explain the relationship between knowledge and ignorance. Starting with the image of men in fetters that limit their movement and force them to look only ahead, this is the idea that all men and women are bound by the limits of their ignorance. Men and women are restricted by the limits of the education of their parents and the small amounts that can be culled from their environment. Images and shadows are representations of those things surrounding us that we see but do not understand because of our limited knowledge. As we obtain the ability to see things more clearly in the cave that is our ignorance, we start to then loosen the fetters that bind us and investigate the objects and images around us with our newly acquired mobility. Eyes that have seen nothing but darkness for so long are now fine-tuned to see even the smallest glimmer of light, or knowledge, in the far reaches of the cave. Constantly moving and gathering knowledge we observe that we are in fact moving closer to the light. We start to discover that the desire for knowledge leads us towards the mouth of our cave of ignorance, we have found the key to our escape.Upon first exiting the cave we are blinded by the brightest of light, though we cannot recognize its origin, we know that it charts our course. Slowly we begin to notice at first little variations of light, mostly little color changes, as if we could not have possibly have taken it in all at once. This is the first realization of education; past truths are either put into perspective or proven false. Either way our mind is finally opening up to the ideas and images that have evaded us for so long. The ability to reason is building within us and we start to question all things past we knew to be true. The eyes start to see even more now and the pain has subsided. We are ravenous and cannot seem ...
