The Meno in Tehran
When in The Meno Plato writes “for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection”, he suggests that the soul has knowledge of all things. This statement rejects the role of the teacher as putting knowledge into the brain of the student. The key message of this passage suggests that lightbulb moments, moments of learning or education are instances of pre-existing knowledge coming to the surface of consciousness and not something new being put in the brain.
At some point between the first time I read the Meno in June of 2019 and the writing of this sentence, I realized that the words for teaching and learning in Farsi translate into “giving memory” and “getting memory”. In Farsi, the word “yaad” means memory. “Yaadam Oomad” means re-member, to recall memory and translates directly to ‘my memory came’. “Yaadet bedam” means to teach you and translates directly to ‘I give you memory’. While I recognized the word “yaad” as ‘memory’ in context of “I remember”, I associated the words for teaching and learning in Farsi in a utilitarian manner as the ideas they represented - teaching and learning, and not what deeper meaning they could hold - the literal translation of giving and receiving memory- as recollection.
Thinking about the idea of recollection in the context of education, teaching and learning, I came to realize that the terminology I already knew in Farsi directly represent the concept of recollection. I already had the ingredients for this realization in place, knowing the meanings of the individual words associated with the phrases memory, teaching and learning. I had just never seen the deeper link to the concept of recollection. This moment of realization of information I already knew is a direct performance of what Plato is suggesting as recollection in the Meno. Layered on top of this is the relationship between the structure of the Farsi language and Plato’s concept of recollection and the linguistic meaning of the words. The significance of this first hand personal experience is that it allowed me to believe the theory of recollection beyond its existence as just a theory. While before it was just information, the realization of my own blindness to the deeper meanings of “teach'' and “learn” in Farsi was an experience of what recollection is first hand. The idea of recollection in the Meno now has a place and a name in my conscious experience beyond the theory as explained in the Meno or the classroom.
A critic might argue that any arbitrary moment of remembering facts or realizing definitions that reference theories can be used as an example of recollection. That my example of the link to the words in Farsi and my ‘definition blindness’ is not of significant relevance to Plato’s theory. That what I highlight as an exciting linguistic representation of recollection may exist in other languages too. To consciously experience a concept in practise solidifies its meaning and place in the memory. Fitting together the puzzle pieces around the idea of recollection and the linguistic characteristics of the words memory, teach and learn in farsi was the closest I’ve come to an intensive personal association with Plato’s Meno.
In the face of an accusation around what is arbitrary and what is not, I question where is the line? How do we determine what is common enough to be arbitrary and what is unique enough to hold importance? Maintaining basic respect for the agency of each individual experience, mine happens to be at the intersection of recollection and the Farsi language when it comes to associating with Plato’s Meno. Yes, linguistic association of similar caliber may exist in other languages as well, but it was not in those languages that I found myself having a conscious and memorable first hand experience of recollection.