Page - 93 - in Reflective Cosmopolitanism - Educating towards inclusive communities through Philosophical Enquiry

CHRIsTIAN (MANUAL) 93 Activity/Exercise: What is friendship? A sign is placed in each corner of the room. Each bears a different word (friends, partner/comrade, sidekick/mate, schoolmates/acquaintances). The following sen- tences are read aloud and the students place themselves under the sign they con- sider most appropriate. 1. I have a problem at home and I need to tell someone. 2. S/he wants me to do something I am not comfortable with, but if I don’t accept he might reject me. 3. We work well together. 4. I don’t know if they have any brothers or sisters. 5. We meet on the park bench every afternoon. 6. I never see him/her alone, always in contexts with more people. 7. I feel comfortable in his/her presence. 8. When s/he speaks, I don’t dare to speak. 9. We always hang out in a group, and we can’t leave the group because they would not like it. 10. When we see each other in summer we spent every minute together, but then, during the rest of the year we never meet or speak. Exercise: Analogies on friendship By comparing two similar relationships, one which we know well and one we don’t, analogical reasoning allows us to infer suppositions about the one we don’t know. It therefore allows us to make headway in our research and discover unknown relation- ships based on our knowledge of known relationships. Analogical reasoning is thus vital in the theory of inductive reasoning, in artistic creation, in the creation of figu- rative expressions in poetry and prose and, in fact, in any innovation (creation) that combines similarity and difference. In order to work on analogical reasoning, we propose the following exercise. In the first part, students have to decide which are good and which are bad analogies. In the second part students are asked to build their own analogies. Very good Good Acceptable Bad The wrist is to the hand as the neck X is to the head The egg is to the hen as the seed is to the plant A sharp knife is to a butcher as a sharp pencil is to a painter The wind is to a comet as the mast is to a sail The liquidizer is to electricity as the car is to petrol Night is to day as winter is to summer Puppies are to dogs as children are to parents