ARISTOTALE

Born in 384 B.C., in Stagira, a city of Greece, Aristotle had a silver spoon in his mouth right from his childhood. His father, Nicomachus, was the court physician of Philip of Macedon. Aristotle entered the famous Academy of the great philosopher Plato at the early age of 17 years. He stayed there for almost 20 years as a student and a teacher. In 347 B.C. after the death of his master Plato, Aristotle left the academy and started travelling. He went to Assos in Mysia and from there to Mitylene. He was called by the king Philip to look after the education of his son Alexander the Great, in 342 B.C. For seven years he was the tutor of Alexander after which he returned to Athens to establish the School known as Lyceum. It was also known as Peripatetic school because of the habit of Aristotle of walking while lecturing. His method of teaching was not only through lectures but also through dialogues. After the death of Alexander, the Great he was accused of sacrilege. He left Athens for Euboea where he died in 322 B.C.
Aristotle was master of dialectic. He was a great observer, a voracious reader and a specialist both in natural sciences as well as in philosophy. Among his writings one finds not only on metaphysics and logic but also on human sciences like psychology and ethics and politics as well as upon natural sciences (Hummel, 1993).
Society as Educator
In an early dialogue of Plato’s, the Protagoras, Socrates asks Protagoras why it is not as easy to find teachers of virtue as it is to find teachers of swordsmanship, riding or any other art. Protagoras' answer is that there are no special teachers of virtue, because virtue is taught by the whole community. Plato and Aristotle both accept the view of moral education implied in this answer. In a passage of the Republic (492 b) Plato repudiates the notion that the sophists have a corrupting moral influence upon young men. The public themselves, he says, are the real sophists and the most complete and thorough educators. No private education can hold out against the irresistible force of public opinion and the ordinary moral standards of society. But that makes it all the more essential that public opinion and social environment should not be left to grow up at haphazard as they ordinarily do, but should be made by the wise legislator the expression of the good and be informed in all their details by his knowledge. The legislator is the only possible teacher of virtue.
Value of Education in the State
Aristotle assigns the paramount political importance to education. It is the great instrument by which the legislator can ensure that the future citizens of his state will share those common beliefs which make the state possible. The Greeks with their small states had a far clearer apprehension than we can have of the dependence of a constitution upon the people who have to work it.
If the state is the organisation of men seeking a common good, power and political position must be given to those who can forward this end. This is the principle expressed in Aristotle's account of political justice, the principle of "tools to those who can use them." As the aim of the state is differently conceived, the qualifications for government will vary. In the ideal state power will be given to the man with most knowledge of the good; in other states to the men who are most truly capable of achieving that end which the citizens have set themselves to pursue. The justness distribution of political power is that in which there is least waste of political ability.
According to Aristotle the virtue of a good citizen and good governor is the same as of a good man; and that everyone before he commands should have first obeyed, it is the business of the legislator to consider how his citizens may be good men, what education is necessary to that purpose, and what is the final object of a good life.
Now life is divided into labour and rest, war and peace; and of what we do the objects are partly necessary and useful, partly noble; and we should give the same preference to these that we do to the different parts of the soul and its actions, as war to procure peace; labour, rest; and the useful, the noble. The politician, therefore, who composes a body of laws ought to extend his views to everything; the different parts of the soul and their actions; more particularly to those things which are of a superior nature and ends; and, in the same manner, to the lives of men and their different actions. They ought to be fitted both for labour and war, but rather for rest and peace; and also to do what is necessary and useful, but rather what is fair and noble. It is to those objects that the education of the children ought to tend, and of all the youths who want instruction (Sharma, 2002).