The use of metaphor is common in some of the most enduring and powerful ideas about the purpose of education. A typical one is a liberation, which is first articulated in Plato's The Republic (C 380 BC). This metaphor, Allegory of the Cave, describes a cave where some chained prisoners are forced to see the shadows of some objects on the wall. Supposing that one prisoner is freed, the prisoner would see the fire, the cave, the objects and he might come out the cave to see the sun, thus he would want to return to the cave to tell others about the sun but it is uneasy to convince them to do so. The cave scene symbolizes the basic situation of the human. The cave refers to the visible world, which is unreal while the world outside is the intelligible world, which is real. …show more content…
In this way, education guides the educated to the path of self-education and develop and implement oneself from the process of life, which is one of the fundamental sources of meaningful life. Jasper advocates the growth meaning students' natural cultivation and free choice making. Similarly, he highlights that education is a form of free choice, rather than planned production This shows the emphasis on autonomy to further liberation of mind, that is, to shape one's own mind without the interference from the external world. If Plato points out the direction of liberal education, Jasper, to some degree, shows the path in a more detailed way, which informs the method of liberal education—self-education. Furthermore, Breiter understands the liberation in education in the way of getting away from schooling. For Bereiter, ‘To educate a child is to act with the purpose of influencing the child's development as a whole person'. This is in line with the classic liberal account of education as general and spiritual as opposed to narrow and vocational