Miss Brodie teaches fascism both theoretically and practically.

Theoretically refers to her telling the class about her holidays in Italy and Germany where fascist regimes made a great impression on her.

For the practical aspect we compared the novel to another novel that deals with fascism in a classroom setting, namely the Wave by Morton Rhue.

The difference being of course that the students in the Wave are aware that fascism is bad and they are taking part in an expeiment

whereas in the prime of Miss Brodie the students aren't aware that fascism is bad and that their group is a small scale model of rascim

which is one of the main ingredients of fascism of course besides dictaorship which is also clearly incorporated by Miss Brodie.

But then again we asked ourselves if there were any positive aspects to the teaching of Miss Brodie, and we did find some instances

of where we think that might be positive. Namely:

She takes her students to museums (page ), does a lesson outside under a tree (page ),

and she actaully has a very sophisticated idea of her own method of teaching which she explicates on page 36

Miss Brodie says to her, education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupils soul, and she illustrates

that idea by explaing that the word education comes from the root e from ex, out and duco, i lead,

so she is talking about the latin verb educere which means to bring out

fine. but: that is a false etymology

actually the word comes form: educare which does not mean bring out at all,

but rather to bring up, to rear; to train or to mold.

educere is only related to educare in a much wider sense, for example we can look at

paedagogy from greek paidagogos, from paidos "child" + agogos "leader."

so there we have an instance of an instructional technique that would justify

the interpretation of education in the bringing or leading out sense

besides the german translation of education, Erziehung - ahd. irzihoan - herausziehen

which also implies that there is something to be brought out form the pupil, not brought to the pupil

but if we look closer at the meaning of the child leader we find that

in Ancient Greece, a paidagogos was usually a slave who took his master's children

to school or to a gym, looking after him and carrying his equipment

and that has nothing to do with what Miss Brodie means by education

what she says she means is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul

now that idea also comes from Greece - like the etymology of paedagogy.

this idea can be found in Plato in three instances

namely in his early Socratic dialogues, in his dialogue Meno and in the Republic

in Plato's early dialogues we can assume that we are presented with a portrayal of the historical Socrates

who goes around the marketplace of Athens and bothers people by asking them about things everybody takes for granted

but few have really thorough understanding of

such as concepts of morality like piety or holiness,

now Socrates' own method of inquiry is that he keeps on aksing questions about the definition of these concepts until

a contradiction occurs, at which point the case is left unsettled in most cases

so what is being led out in this case is the fact that most people in ancient Greece didn't know what they were talking about

whereas Socrates was much wiser than everybody else because at least he knew that he knew nothing

Now, when the method is used today by teachers they know the answer to their question beforehand but pretend not to know it

and have the students articulate their own ideas concerning the question. and all the teacher then has to do is

ask pointed questions that will lead the students to the right answer, eventually

this aspect of the Socratic method was first demonstrated in the dialogue Meno

where a slave boy is led to discover a fact about geometry, namely that the diagonal in a square

is one side of a square that is exactly double in size to the original square

and last but not least in a third instance of the leading out sense of educational methods

there is the allegory of the cave form Plato's republic:

educators lead the prisoners out to the sunlight

if that requires more explanation:

the prison-house of the cave is the world of sight,

the prisoners are bound in chains to the visible world by their own physical self,

that's why after their physical birth form the cave of the womb into the physical and visible world

people have to be born again metaphysically

from the illusory world into the real but invisible world of the spirit, its ideas and eternal forms