i think that we need to look deeper into the meanings of our assignments. For example, "Alegory of the Cave" is deeper than someone getting an education. It has more to do with a rebelion. Plato is the escapee. he did things that are ground shaking. We are not escapees!! We have not done anything remarkable, and many of us won't unless we realize that we are still chained. by the comments made in class, we all seem to think that we have freed ourselves from the "chains", which means that we will never make it to escaping. Those who are chained do not think that anything is wrong, it is the one rebel who realizes that the things that they are comfortable with are chains and deception! That is what lets them escape!

I could not agree more. The idea of escaping is not just getting older, though that is what I think most people interpreted it as. I am not one to tell people what an allegory means or what the symbols are intended to convey, but the escapee was a rarity, not something that happen as time went on. The person who escaped their chains was radical, and they could see the world in a whole new light, a way that no others could conceive. These are people that are immortalized in history, people who broke the rules, who changed the system. They are people who we read about to this day in history and ledged. What have we as ASU students contributed to humanity that is worth noting some five hundred years from now? Just because we go to college does not make us revolutionaries and enlightened. What have we done that has broken the mold and changed the way our society sees ideas? As educators, we need to be aware of this allegory so that our children learn to ask questions, challenge what they know, and make the world a better place ultimately. We, as teachers, need not be the chains or the shadows of shapes and fallacies. We are what make the mold breakers and the revolutionaries, even though we may be stuck in the cave ourselves. To me, the idea that Plato presented was something larger than even now I am able to understand, and because of that, I strive to know my world better, and for my students to do the same.

Very good points, but I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment here. Can a civilized society survive if there were an over abundance of rebels? And if so do you think that a standardized institution (governments, school systems, organized religions, families) will allow overtly radical ideas to infiltrate their mainstreamed ‘happy’ world. Rebels stir up trouble. No institution wants that. It’s like a group of church officials allowing a person to come up from the congregation and preach about how the Devil is the supreme being in the universe. If you know a church that would allow this, then I really want to meet them, because the church will not exist for long. I’m not sure our world is ready for everyone to know that they have chains around them.

The point has been missed. “Rebelâ€

I guess there isn't much more to say here unless I'm going to argue with Zack, but I did want to come on this thread and make a real brief comment or two.
First off, I totally agree with what Zack and Brian were saying about how maybe some people see the scale as too small in the allegory or even miss the point entirely, and that the allegory can and perhaps should be taken in a broader scope, to talk about people who escape the bounds of society and rebel.
What I took from the reading was a sense of thinking and acting for yourself, and not being governed totally by what society tells you. I took it that sometimes, if we let it, our society can act as a sort of mental prison. And the point was that we should not allow it to do so, but should remain tuned in to the real picture in the world, and our own points of view.
This said, I suppose you could take the allegory on several levels. Perhaps, in a way, by simply being at college, progressing through time, and evolving as people we are living out the moral of the story on a certain level. So long as we are doing so because we want to be here, and not because we feel that we have to be. However, you could also look at the same story with the same moral and see a broader scope, embracing the ideas of rebellion that Zack and Brian were talking about. And that is the way I saw the reading.