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Many Things Plato

Is it appropriate to refer to the whole Book VII of Plato's The Republic as the myth of the cave?

No, because there's more in that chapter than the selection we read. Also, it is not the official title of the selection from which this class reads. Please refer to it as the myth of the cave (no " " or capital letters) or by the chapter title.

How do I refer to Plato's myth as a title in the body?

Students often refer to the Plato selection as, "The Myth of the Cave" in the sentences of the body paragraphs. That's not the title given on the site we're using. The title on that site is "On Shadows and Realities in Education." So sentences that refer to that version of the text and read as the two below read are incorrect:

1a. Plato's "Myth of the Cave" shows that frames of reference can differ, and differ vastly.

1b. Plato's Myth of the Cave shows that frames of reference can differ, and differ vastly.

Both are incorrect. Using the quotation marks or underlining don't make them right. When the correct title is not used, this example is preferred.

2. Plato's myth of the cave shows that frames of reference can differ, and differ vastly.

This sentence shows the correct title:

3. Plato's "On Shadows and Realities in Education" shows that frames of reference can differ, and differ vastly.

I prefer #2 because it is more concise. Both #2 and #3 are correct in the MLA forms, and #3 should be mentioned at least once, preferably in the introduction.

The titles are set off correctly in this page you're reading now.

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What goes in the parentheses?
When the sentence mentions that Plato says it, no parenthetical reference is needed. There are no page numbers on the Plato site, so it is simplest just to include Plato's name in the credit tag of the sentence.

Example: Plato's myth of the cave shows that frames of reference can differ, and differ vastly.

However, if the name is not included, the credit tag for a quotations from electronic sources (an unnumbered web page, television or radio program, or motion picture) included the name when it is available or a shortened form of the title.

Example: The cave analogy shows that frames of reference can differ, and differ vastly (Plato).

What about the translator? Do I start the works cited, with the name of the translator, Jowett?
An entry never starts with a translator's name unless the topic of the paper is the quality of the translation or the translator's life. Neither are options for us, so don't start with Jowett. The translator has a specific, later, place in the order.

The MLA says to start every signed entry with the author's name. Who is the author of the myth of the cave? Plato. That's what the entry starts with - Plato.

How does the whole entry look in the works cited?
Please see the examples for web pages in the book. To figure out how to discover the pattern for and type any entry, follow the steps below.

 

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Why is it so important
to do the MLA and do it correctly?

When a degree program requires a composition class, it's a clear signal that power writing will be vital to the work.

Students often object to taking the Modern Language Association (MLA) style or any other documentation system seriously. A valid critique is that paying too much attention to it stifles creativity. But what experienced writers know is that writing occurs in stages.

Pre-writing - the first stage in which a person performs mental exercises to get ready to write

  • Purpose: To prime the pump, stimulate the brain to bring what it knows about the topic to the surface.
  • Activities: In pre-writing, one brainstorms, freewrites, outlines, creates questions, answers questions, and/or fills in tree diagrams, charts, boxes, or balloons.

Writing - The writing stage in which one drafts the content.

  • Activity: Writing
  • Warning: At this stage, focus on getting the information onto the paper or screen. Don't correct spelling or grammar. Leave that for the last stage. The writer who stops to make corrections runs the risk of losing an idea that she or he can't recover.

Re-writing - The writing stage in which one bolsters the content, filling in the gaps and deleting what detracts from communication.

Activity: Climb into the audience's shoes, look at the text from the reader's perspective, add what she or he would find helpful and delete everything that could distract or derail . Warning:

Proofreading/editing

During the creative process, they give imagination full reign and freedom. They reserve correcting the spelling, grammar and documentation for the last stages of writing, the editing and proofreading that come after imagination has generated all of the ideas. Some free online sites below demonstrate the different patterns and are repeated from the course calendar.

But when the time does come to focus on the documentation style, several reasons make it worth the students' time.

  • The English department requires documentation as part of the course objectives to satisfy state requirements designed to see that every college and university teaches the skill set society has deemed necessary.
  • Most disciplines offer no workshop or class for the student required to write a senior paper or master's thesis in his or her major field. One reason the composition course may be required is that the student is expected to pick up the skill of writing to specifications for such a future need. When the time comes for him or her to put that major, degree-making-or-breaking document together, she or he will know what to look for in the specs and to match them no matter how they vary from the MLA.
  • Writing to style specifications develops the skill of paying attention to detail, a skill that the professionals these students may become will need. The MLA is not the best documentation system. It is just an example for learning to pay attention to greater and lesser details -- respect for others' ownership of information, plus these particulars that change from style book to style book:
    • Overall format, the look of the page
    • Capitalization
    • Elements required in the running head, parenthetical references, and works cited
    • Sequence of information within running head, parenthetical references, and works cited entries
    • The punctuation separating the elements in the running head, parenthetical references, and works cited entries
    • Headings
    • Titles and how to set them off
    • Numbers and numbering styles

      If a student learns to match those specifications in the MLA, she or he will have the experience to look for how the above elements are done in the APA, AP, Chicago, or any other style.

      People who manage time, money, and/or human resources, their own or another's, must have the ability to pay attention to detail or major assets get squandered. Recent developments provide some sobering examples.
      • If the detail in html code is not exactly right, the web page does not work correctly and time is lost in troubleshooting and "Page not found" errors.
      • Overlooked specifications caused the Mars Climate Orbiter crash in 1999 and, in part, the Apollo 13 explosion in 1970, costing much money.
      • The 1987 Challenger disaster is evidence that when the college-graduate professionals in charge fail to recognize the importance of fine points, it costs not only money, but lives, too. Alternative description: TAMU Engineering Ethics prof's site.

    • The keys are knowing to pay attention to detail, knowing which details matter, and when and how to match them. The documentation requirement in freshman comp exercises those skills.

  • Last, recognizing and acknowledging others' ideas as different from one's own and crediting them correctly is an identifying characteristic of a person who has reached one level of intellectual maturity. Amateurs see all information as having originated with and belonging to themselves. Experienced writers know which information they created and which comes from others. Plagiarism may be a character flaw and ethical failure, but it may be just a sign of inexperience. A really good education trains its leaders to at least the level of maturity in which its writers know when to credit others' ideas.

The course content that seems irrelevant in every field bears a closer look. The degree of annoyance should never be mistaken to mean that the source of the discomfiture is unimportant.

Why Can't You Do
MLA the Easy Way?

or, The Works Cited and Flavor-Aid, Comets, and Airplanes

I could send the MLA citation pattern for Plato's myth or any other source upon request, but then that sets students up to go throughout life looking for people who want co-opt their liberty - to tell them what to do and how to do it without their permission.

Not too long ago, 900 of them drank or, in the case of the children, were led to drink, cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid in a mass suicide they chose to perform. Others departed believing that a space ship hidden by the Hale-Bopp comet would take them to the "other side." More recently, 19 of them brought down some buildings and took away the lives of people who were just going to work to support the ones they loved. So it is better to learn for oneself than become overly, inappropriately, and unhealthily dependent on others.

The steps for doing a works cited entry correctly are these:

  1. Decide what kind of source it is. Some common print ones are books by one author, books by more than one author, chapters or selections from books, journal articles, periodical (newspaper and magazine) articles. All of these can also be found online. In addition, other electronic sources are free web sites, subscription database sites, motion pictures, songs, and television programs.
  2. Look up that kind of source in the handbook and look at its pattern. The patterns are in the section with the tinted pages.
  3. Note the type of information that the MLA requires for that type of source - Author's name, title of the work, etc. Look at the punctuation that separates the items. Look at the examples. Then match that pattern as you type. Replace the information there with the matching data from your source in order. Separate items with the punctuation shown in the handbook. Skip items you don't have.
  4. Type each entry flush left with the margin.
  5. Complete each entry. Select the whole list, and format it as a hanging indent. In MS Word, select the list > Format >Paragraph> Indentation > Special > Hanging.

BTW, this procedure works for any web page. Papers that get an F on this part don't fail because they placed a comma where a period should have been. They fail because the works cited indicates that the student writer did not even try.

The Works Cited and Its Learning Level

Discovering the correct pattern may seem hard because it requires work, but that's because it's an academic application task. An academic application is harder on several orders of magnitude than knowledge, comprehension, and analysis tasks. In one type of application task, the student has a pattern for the correct form and is given new data, which she or he must the plug in to complete it correctly. That's all that's going on here. So work it like any math problem for which the formula and most numbers are given and the challenge is to find the missing ones.

It's the same brain power one uses to figure out how to best use the resources and resolve of freedom to counter the efforts of those who would use liberty to obliterate it. This application task can become a little more complex, a reflexive irony in that it turns on itself -- the terrorists' goal is to use freedom to destroy it.

How does one in turn transform that abuse of liberty into the vehicle that heads off its loss? When a terrorist uses liberty to destroy freedom, how can a free people turn that abuse into the weapon that defeats anarchy? Or is it better to break out of that cycle of irony and use other means to stop the spread of tyranny? And how does one create the daily life in support of that effort? That's the challenge facing us, my students, and our children and their children and their children's children.

And the preparation to meet that challenge starts with plugging in the given data in the prescribed order for Plato's myth and other sources.

And you thought you were taking this class just to get a credit out of the way.

 

Updated 3/24/09 by Maria Garcia - HyperClass[at]Hotmail.com

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