School education: a flashlight in the darkness of the cave

The present article intends to reflect on a pedagogical reading from the Allegory of the Cave described on book VII of the work Republic by Plato. Despondent with the ethical and political decay of his time, Plato proposes to exhibit a project of social restructuring, and for it, he has the education as a mean for his purpose. Thus, in this Allegory, we find, in a symbolic way, the attribution of the school, and in it the assignment of the teacher educator, the responsibility for social transformation. The pedagogy described in the Allegory of the Cave was that used by Socrates, who is not only the main character, but also personifies the figure of the philosopher who broke free from the chains and can, therefore, contemplate the true essence of things in a dialectical process, returning to the cave to free others, who kill him for not being able or wish to break their chains.