Ore sama to Chibi: My Essay

This is from my Prof. I got a B- for the paper demoted to a C+. Funny thing about this, I wasn’t going to turn an essay in. However he was going to fail me regardless of what I made through the rest of the semester, for not doing it. I had some friend that thought it was funny that I cited myself in this paper…

Katie,

The line by line summary of a particular section of the Meno is missing. See paper prompt describing this part of the assignment.

Paper presents the problem raised by Socrates: good parents don't necessarily raise good kids. Paper needs to be more grounded in the text. Quote some of the examples discussed by Socrates and analyze them. Why can these great men teach their kids certain athletic skills, but not virtue? Why would a kid be eager to learn athletic skills?

Nice passage from Proverbs, but be careful using references to Christianity as the Greeks have no knowledge of the Bible. Socrates lived 400 years before Christ. As paper suggests, defining virtue is much easier if one can appeal to revelation, but what if one does not possess a book like the Bible? Moreover, is there some way to prove the validity of the morality set forth in the Bible. In the Medieval period, Christian thinkers were trying to harmonize religion and Greek philosophy by asking this sort of question.

Webster's does not help us here as the dictionary only tells us how words are used and not what they mean philosophically.
With more grounding in the text, this could have been a much stronger paper.

grade=B- reduced to C+ since the line-by-line summary is missing

From: Kit Davis [mailto:russia_nodrey@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 5:25 PM
To: Silvermintz, Daniel
Subject: Paper

sorry this is late. Can you still take it?

Thesis line by line

The right of teaching is really given to the parents and we as parents should be educating our children by the best means we can. Virtue in the world of Christians is following and living gospel principles. The higher standard would be the Bible and if Mormon, the book of Mormon. Sometimes parents do fail we are human and not perfect. That is why there is forgiveness and repentance, and most of all love. The important thing is Free Will, everyone and uses it. Teaching Virtue is modeling it, by examples and practicing what you preach. Yes, children will rebel and not do what you want them to do, that is life.

Word Count 938

Citation count 10ish

Katie Davis

Prof. Silvermintz

Essay 1

Can We as Parents Teach Virtue to Our Children

If Virtue is teachable, then good men would raise good children. Socrates and Meno hypothesize on knowledge, wisdom and nature. If teachable, whether knowledge or wisdom, the virtue would be seen reflected in the children of these subjects of hypotheses.

Virtue is defined as “conformity to a standard of right” (Webster dictionary). If it is a standard, then it must be a lesson that can be taught by parents. There is only one standard of right\wrong and that is God’s law and what he expects us to do. Thus by following God’s commandments, a good parent will teach and model these standards and raise good children. God has given the Ten Commandments to be a guide for virtue. Teaching the commandments by expanding on the meaning of each one, and the benefits of following the commandment is a starting point. But parents also need to set an example by living them, this helps re-enforce them as the standards to live by. Socrates said “Aristides, the son of Lysimachus… Then did he too not give his son, the finest education of the Athenians” (line 454 on page 37 Meno). Parents give their children the best of what they have, in education, principles and needs.

Socrates makes the example that the good families and fathers of the time wished to pass on the knowledge and virtue to their sons. They spent a lot of time and money to have their sons educated to such ends. Also Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he grows old he will not depart from it.” The bible is a good guide to God’s law, and his higher standards. Socrates stated in the article “Socrates in the Market” that here is a higher standard use by artisans and crafters in their work that is universal. A good person teaches freedom of choice, all people have the right to choose right from wrong. But by giving freedom of choice you are also giving them away to leave the “the higher standard”.
Parents that are good people, but fail in teaching their children virtue are afraid to correct their children’s behavior “in fear of losing a friendship or respect with their children” (Craig Davis). They are more interested in being a friend than in correcting behavior. However Parents that do their best to give their children the best education, morals and a firm foundation in the right way of life, sometimes seem to fail because of the free will their children are able to exercise. Children have the right to choose how to live. There was a family that was very religious and the parents where well thought of in the community and their church, they had six children. Five of their children are married and had and followed the principles taught to them; they are also respected in the community. One of their daughters decided on her own that she did not want to live the life of virtue. The daughter did not choose the best of friends, and was in and out of abusive relationships, she ended up having a child of her own out of the bounds of wedlock. By looking at just that daughter’s life it was said that her parents were not able to teach Virtue and the higher standard of living regardless of the other five children being successful; because teaching is based on giving children a chance to use and practice free will (journal entries Feb-2000 to present).

Socrates quoted Theognis (472 and 474)

“Drink and eat with them, and with them sit,
And gratify them whose power is great.
For from good men you will be taught good things.
But if you mingle with the bad, you will simply loose
Even the mind you have.
Never would a bad man be born from a good father,
Being Persuaded by sober speech. But by teaching
You will never make a bad man good.”

Parents have the responsibility to raise their children to the best of their ability to follow the standards that God has provided. Not all children will follow their parents’ example; they fail by keeping company with bad friends as the above poem quoted by Socrates or just not controlling their impulses. Or they are influenced by outside factors – TV, movies etc. to do things that are not virtuous.

Learning requires that the student be an active participant. Participant observation is when you study another culture and participate in the actives as well as observing them(term from Anthropology 3131); children do this on a daily basis where they follow the example of the parent learning what to do and about their religious values. The daughter in the above paragraph illustrates that there is a hope of regaining virtue after losing it. The daughter is now, working hard as going back to church, school and teaching the grand-daughter what is right in the hope (of all parents) that she will do better then what she did and not follow in the same footsteps. An Elder in the Quorum of the Seventy from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Elder Knighton, said “It has been said that the three greatest teachers are example, example, and example. Every parent can best teach gospel truths to children by being a model of Christ-like living. Our children will learn more by observing how we live- how we act and what we do- than by any other way we may choose to teach them. “(“Becoming our Children’s Greatest Teachers,” Ensign. Sep. 1999, 15”)