5 Platonic Societies

Plato has outlined five different types of societies, or governments, in his Republic. These include aristocracy, timarchy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny/anarchy. Of these, Plato choses to glorify aristocracy, finding the other four societies to be imperfect. He goes on to explain that in a timarchic society honor and fame are valued above all else. It is perfectly understandable to find flaw in such a society, I think. Then he explains oligarchy is a society based primarily on making money, and those with the money rule. Again, it would prove easy to find fault with this society. In an anarchy, chaos and disorder ensue until a tyrant arises. This, too, would easily be considered an imperfect society. All of this makes perfect sense to me. What confuses me is Plato's obvious disdain for democracy. Democracy, if only a limited one, seems like such a great choice to me. How could ancient Athenian democracy be so bad, so different from today, to cause Plato's distaste for it? I understand that no legal system can be truly perfect, but democracy seems to be pretty close, if not in practice then at least in theory. What really struck me was how Plato thought it was, as the authors put it, "absurd to give every person an equal say, when most people-in his views-do not know what is best." (83) At first the idea doesn't seem that strange, after all, a lot of people are 'in the dark' about an awful lot of things. Perhaps it isn't wise to let people who are exceptionally ignorant to carry the same amount of weight in their opinions as a well-educated person. And this is what really confuses me; Plato founded the very first Academy of Athens, surely he knew how important education was! And if he knew this, why wouldn't he simply declare that all persons, or at least all voting persons, should be enrolled in school? If all voting persons were well-educated, then wouldn't it make sense that they all have an equal vote?