Seite - 109 - in Reflective Cosmopolitanism - Educating towards inclusive communities through Philosophical Enquiry

CHRIsTIAN (MANUAL) 109 2. You are going to play a football match against boys two years older than you. They give your team a two goal head start. Do you think that is correct? 3. In order to encourage girls’ participation, the coach decides that 5 out of a total of 15 players will be girls even if that means leaving more skillful players out of the team. Do you think this measure is correct? 4. The town hall has started a recruitment process to fill some vacancies. In order to favor disabled people, any applicants who are disabled will receive 2 extra points in the process. Do you think this decision is just? 5. Do you think anyone was discriminated against in the previous cases? 6. Do you think an advantage was given to people who did not need it? 7. Do you think that discriminating in favor of people who have difficulties may be correct in some cases? In which cases and why? 8. Do you think that discrimination helps turn the initial situation around and pre- vents the beneficiaries from suffering from inequality or exclusion in the future? 9. Do you think that positive discrimination is good for the needy or excluded, or do you think that it is actually a way to stigmatize them and reinforce their margin- alization by labeling them as “victims” and “losers”? 10. Some people think that positive discrimination should only be an initial phase to compensate for a previous negative discrimination, but that it should be an excep- tion, not the norm. Do you agree? Why or why not? Episode 7: Who has the right to play? The girls do Leading Idea 1: Rights There is a close relation between rights, justice and laws or norms. Some approaches estab- lish that rights are only those recognized by the law. For them, something is just if it is within the law or legal norms. Others demand certain independence between justice and legality, and between personal rights and law as a body of rules. According to these people, there may be legitimate and just conduct that can clash with established legality. There may be rights not recognized by certain laws, which brings us to the issue that laws that don’t recognize rights are not legitimate laws. If the law doesn’t recognize my rights, the law has to change. In the absence of law or written legal norms, custom may acquire force of law and ob- jectify the rights and duties of a community (customary law). This is an important concept when we discuss rights from the cosmopolitan point of view. Human rights, in connection with a cosmopolitan viewpoint, can be considered a global framework of common principles that go beyond national or local perspectives, and considered in dialogue with principles and practices in a local context. That is to say, local cultures may assess themselves in light of global concerns, perspectives, and frame- works, and make generalizations born out of local contexts. It is interesting not only to be conscious of what human rights are, but to also think about the problems that arise when trying to apply them and in what situations these rights are honored. This is of primary importance when there is a conflict of interest between different rights or between what some groups consider their rights and what the rights of other groups are. You can find further resources on the concept of “rights” in the manual to Ella, episode 6, leading idea 3, discussion plan “Rights” and “Children´s Rights” and in the manual to Tina and Amir, episode 1, leading idea 1, discussion plan and exercise “Children’s rights”.