But although Socrates advocated oligarchy as the fittest system of governance, he did not advocate aristocracy. In one of his earlier dialogues, called the "Meno," Socrates is shown leading a slave boy through mathematical proofs. With correct prompting the boy is thus able to recover innate knowledge about the world. Thus Socrates saw intellectual gifts as intrinsic to the human mind and not necessarily based on the ability of the tutor.

But to accept the Socratic doctrine one must also believe that potential intellectual abilities are not democratically bestowed upon individuals as suggested by the Sophists, who aimed to teach all people to rhetorically please the people in the law courts and in the political sphere, by using clever phrases. Socrates believed that there was an inherent paradox in acquring knowledge "the most fundamental questions about our own nature and function," are actually unaswerable and undemonstratable by common rhetorical devices, therefore "it seems impossible for us to learn anything. The only escape, Socrates proposed, is to acknowledge "that we already know what we need to know." (Kemerling, 2002, "Plato: Immortality and the Forms-Doctrine of Recollection," Philosophy Pages)

How will this philosophy address public expectations concerning student achievement? Accountability?

On one hand, the Socratic dialectic may seem to be an equalizing form of philosophy. Anyone can answer the questions of the teacher. But because the method stresses student recollection, rather than the teacher's ability to mold or impart knowledge upon a blank slate, it did not function as such in Socrates' actual practice. The Republic, the delineation of the ideal state, advances a tiered division of society, mimicking the division of the body into soul, heart, and lower regions-rulers are innately of the mind, warriors of the heart or hands, and laborers of the lower regions of the body.

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