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Essay / Education in Thomas More's "Utopia" - 2623
The purpose of education is to learn, and in this process of learning and education, greater purposes are served. Education in Thomas More's utopia seems to serve a larger purpose, which is to create virtuous people and citizens, because they are responsible for the flourishing of a human community. In Shakespeare's The Tempest, there seems to be an underlying idea of a connection between education and a sense of social control. The idea of instilling in his subjects a sense of obedience and influencing their knowledge through education, in order to create a sense of belonging to a nation, prevails in The Tempest. On the one hand, education serves to create citizens of a thriving society and, on the other hand, to create the idea of citizenship for the inhabitants of a pre-existing nation. The play begins with Prospero having a set lesson plan for his island. He also ensures that the nobles (Alonzo, Sebastian and Antonio) who were against him are not forgotten, creating a sense of fear and authority from the start. Most of The Tempest has to do with Prospero's re-education of the central characters. Prospero used magic and other liberal arts ideas (music, festivities, etc.) to control the island's inhabitants. These methods are part of his larger educational plan. Faced with these methods, Prospero is faced with a dilemma: choosing between studying the liberal arts and effective management. “And Prospero, the first duke, being so renowned/ In dignity and for the liberal/ Without parallel; these being all my study,/The government which I exercised over my brother,/And I became a stranger to my state, being transported/And ravished into secret studies. (I, ii, 72-77) Instead of giving... in the middle of a sheet...... the teacher is always right and accepting this at the earliest made the students' learning life pleasant or which resembled that of Caliban, learning out of fear and therefore rebellious. Every idea lacks certain aspects and therefore there is no perfect idea, and if there was a perfect idea, according to Plato, it would be education itself. The will to learn seems to be the means by which we can move towards the ideal form of education and be filled with utopian virtues. Works CitedMacaulay, TB "Minutes of the Honorable TB Macaulay, dated February 2, 1835." Selections from School Records, Part I (1781-1839) (1920/65): 107-117.More, Sir Thomas. Utopia. Ed. Robert M. Adams. Trans. Robert M. Adams. 2nd edition. New York: WW Norton & Company, 1992. Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Ed. Stéphane Orgel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.