A group of prisoners sit in a cave where they have been incarcerated their entire lives. Their legs and necks are tightly bound so all they can see is the rock wall directly in front of them. Behind the prisoners a fire blazes, and there is a small wall like the screen in a marionette theater, where people carry puppets of animals and trees and other props. These shadows are the only reality the men have ever known.

I was a sophomore at a small charter school for the arts, playing challenging music and getting good grades. I was in a comfortable groove, and my daily schedule had remained practically unchanged for the past three years. Everyday I woke up and crammed into a car with the rest of my carpool, and headed from Tempe to downtown Phoenix. I went to class with the same teachers, ate lunch in the same courtyard with the same people, and after school I took the same 3:10 lightrail back home. I knew everyone, it was familiar, and I felt comfortable, but I was stuck. There were 50 people in my grade, and everything was taken care of for us by administration. All of our classes were chosen for us, and if anyone had trouble in a class, the teacher would come help them before they had a chance to go in for advice themselves. There were no opportunities to get involved with sports, and the selection of clubs and organizations to join was pitiful. I knew that this stifling environment wasn’t helping me grow. Then a solution presented itself; I could leave and transfer to a public high school. This may not sound like a big decision, but I had never been to a public school. I would be jumping into something with no idea of what to expect. Although I was anxious about changing schools, I put my fears behind me and transferred to for my junior and senior years.

A prisoner is freed from his bonds. He suffers intensely as he moves his neck and looks around for the first time in his life. Distressed by the glare of the lights, he struggles to comprehend that the puppets and fire he sees now is more real than the shadows he knows so well. Soon after, he is reluctantly dragged up and out of the cave up to the outside world and put in the full sunlight. The prisoner is so dazzled and overwhelmed by the brilliance of this new world that he can only look at shadows. He then moves to reflections of men and objects in water, then finally to viewing the objects themselves.

Going from a class of 50, to a class of 600 was anything but easy. For the first week of school I was lost in a sea of people, in a constant state of shock. Even the simplest tasks –finding my classes, getting food in the cafeteria, finding a bathroom, choosing who to sit by at lunch– overwhelmed me. Whenever the bell rang to change classes, I was swept up in a deafening tidal wave of teenagers cramming through the tight hallways. Despite the immense challenges of this new reality, I refused to go back to my old school, and I fully committed to my new school. Slowly things got easier. I became friends with people from incredibly different backgrounds than mine whom I would have never met if I had stayed at my old school. I was exposed to an entirely new environment with a multitude of new opportunities all ready for me to discover. I realized that like the cave in Plato’s Allegory, the controlled environment at mu old school was just a fraction of what was real.

When the prisoner is fully adjusted to the brightness of his new surroundings, he looks up towards the heavens and sees the sun. He realizes that this is the source of everything he sees; the light, his sense of sight, and the trees and all other objects are possible solely because of the sun. The prisoner has a new sense of understanding that has completely surpassed anything imaginable in the cave. From periods of chaos and adjustment, comes clarity.
At my massive high school, I found my home on the swim team. I represented my school playing both music and sports, I took AP classes, and I chose my own schedule. I gained a new sense of independence, and was forced to learn how to advocate for myself (when you’re one in 3000 students this is a vital skill). For the first time, my success was no longer dependent on anyone else’s actions. At the small, controlled environment of my charter school, I was unaware of the endless choices of who I could be, the people I could meet, the friends I could make, and what I could get involved in. These opportunities were not available. For me to truly learn about myself, I had to go to a large school and learn on my own, instead of being confined to a small selection of possibilities. These realizations helped me develop a new sense of individuality, and they all stemmed from my decision to leave my personal “cave” and move onto something bigger than I had imagined.

Many people say that a small school is better for both learning and a sense of community. They argue that with thousands of students, everyone’s education is compromised. I wholeheartedly disagree. A small school simply cannot provide the same extracurricular opportunities, and it greatly hinders the process of becoming self-reliant. Students often don’t learn about many essential social situations, and they don’t meet people from radically different backgrounds than them. Because of my decision to transfer to a large high school, I had the opportunity to play sports, get involved in clubs, advocate for myself, and meet a wide range of people, all of which were eye opening experiences that I know I benefitted from. At a large school, students are able to experience more, branch out, and decide who they truly want to be, pushing them far away from the restraints of a small school.