by Amy K.

Created on: November 29, 2009

Plato/Socrates in the book "Plato's Republic" suggests that music is not up to par and fiddles away social progress. I would argue that society has progressed since Plato's time and music is now up to his standard of education and it only helps social progress since music is a universal language.

In book seven Socrates states that there are four levels of education: arithmetic, geometry with planes, geometry with 3D solids, and astronomy. He clearly says that education should be taught like geometrythrough problem-solving (277). He suggests that some studies such as astronomy and music (during Socrates' time frame) are not taught through problem solving (the way that they should be taught). Socrates then puts astronomy and music in the same category of education by saying one of them is for the ears, and the other is for the eyes (278). So is he suggesting that the highest level of education is astrology and music? Socrates answers that they are at least on the same level of education by saying just as our eyes are able to look up at the stars, our ears can hear harmonious motion of another kind. According to the Pythagoreans, they are sister sciences. Shall we agree with them? Glaucon: that sounds right (278). However Socrates then suggests that the study is not up to par by saying, we agreed that today's astronomers fall short of such knowledge. The way our students currently study music is equally empirical (278). So he is suggesting that both astronomy and music should be on the third order of thought however music during his time was in the second order of thought. He supports this by suggesting that the study of music is on the same level of learning as our senses when he states, the sounds and harmonies they analyze are only the ones that they can hear and that they value their ears more than their minds (278). So Socrates is suggesting that back then music was on the second level of learning (learning from the senses). He was probably correct back then during his time frame, however I would like to pose that we have made some progress with time and say that the studying of music is closer to the third order of thought now. It is no longer based on the sensory perception level that it used to be but rather now it is closer to the level that Socrates desired, that it would be taught like geometrythrough problem-solving (277). I believe that we have made some progress with time because people go to college to study music and it is no longer learned by

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