The 10 Most Influential Progressive and Spiritual Leaders in Education (Part 1)

2. Plato (427-347 BCE). The first big-deal philosopher in Western culture, Plato was a student of Socrates (that pesky gadfly who urged everyone to “know thyself!”). Plato established a school called the Academy in 387 BC, a gathering place of intellectuals–more informal than today’s schools. Aristotle was one of Plato’s students at the Academy. Plato was deeply passionate about learning, seeking after universally true knowledge, thereby countering the relativism and nihilism, or “sophistry” of the Sophists. For Plato, the educated elite are the ones best prepared to lead society into becoming a society organized around a true understanding of justice. Progressive for his time, Plato believed that women could be and should be educated as well as men–or at least those women who have an innate capacity, like their intellectually-gifted male counterparts, to serve as intellectual “guardians” of society.