Mr. Braithwaite describes his lecture as follows:

"Traditionally serving to introduce the study of Plato’s two dozen dialogues, the Meno raises questions about what virtue is and how it is acquired, about what knowledge is—both in itself and in relation to opinion, and about how teaching and learning are connected.

I will offer a preliminary, or serious beginner’s, reading of the dialogue, with a view to opening one path to these questions: What are the conditions Plato suggests as ideal or best, indispensable or useful, for learning and teaching? How, and to what extent, are these conditions affected by the differences between face-to-face student-teacher meetings, and meetings among geographically-dispersed teachers and students, mediated by an electronic screen? What sort of community is an 'on-line' community?"