PHILOSOPHY FOR CITIZENSHIP

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION – teachers’ notes

The accompanying resources (the ‘difference exercise’ and the ‘deafness’ exercise’) are suitable for a wide variety of different age groups (KS2 to KS4) and are designed to address the diversity and inclusion theme in the citizenship curriculum. By using them as the centrepiece of a philosophy for citizenship enquiry, they should provide enough material for two lessons.

THE DIFFERENCE EXERCISE

THE SET UP

  • Before the lesson, you may want to print out five sets of the cards.
  • You should divide the class into groups of five pupils and each group should be given a set of the cards.
  • You should then ask each group to agree a ranking of the cards: this should be done on the basis of how similar the pupils think they are to the characters depicted on the card. So, for example, if they agree between themselves that they are more similar to their best friend than their pet dog, they should rank their best friend above their pet dog.
  • Ideally, each group should express its ranking by placing the cards on the floor in the appropriate order.

THE ENQUIRY

  • You should then ask the pupils to wander round the room and take a look at the other groups’ rankings.
  • Once they have done this, they should be given the opportunity to ask questions to the other groups. For example, one group might ask another group why it ranked the pet dog as most similar and the alien as least similar, or why it ranked the child in China as more similar than a child in a wheelchair.
  • Although you don’t want to intervene too often, you should at this stage of the enquiry try to get the children to state their reasons for thinking that they are more similar to x than y. Factors that might be mentioned include:
  • Physical similarity (‘I look like x’)
  • Biological similarity (‘I have the same genes as x’; ‘I’m the same species as x’; ‘I’m related to x’)
  • Social connectedness (‘I spend lots of time with x’)
  • Geographical proximity (‘I live in the same house/village/country as x’)
  • Psychological similarity (‘I have just the same personality as x’; ‘I’m a rational agent, like x’)
  • Similar interests (‘I like the same things as x’)
  • Similar moral status (‘I have the same rights as x’)
  • Similar experiences (‘I’ve grown up with x’)
  • Once the pupils have started to state their reasons for their rankings, you may want to consider:
  • Consistency: a group might, for example, say ‘I am most similar to my older brother because I look like him’, but then you may find that they have ranked (say) the chimpanzee above Mr Spock. Is this consistent with their way of grading similarity?
  • Importance: are some forms of similarity more important than others? Is physical similarity more important than having similar interests? Can people be similar in some respects but not others?
  • Practical implications: What relevance do the different forms of similarity and difference have to the way we treat people? When should we ignore difference (in assigning exam grades? In choosing friends? In assigning rights?) and when should we take account of difference (in allocating wheelchairs or parking spaces? In deciding what presents to buy for a person)?

THE DEAFNESS EXERCISE

THE SET UP

  • You should play the first 3 and ½ minutes of the YouTube clip:
  • As back-up, you may like to have a copy of the transcript to hand. You may also want to give copies of the transcript to the class as an aide-memoire.
  • You should then follow the standard ‘philosophy for children’ structure: (i) question-forming in small groups; (ii) question-picking; (iii) first thoughts; (iv) building the enquiry; (v) final thoughts.

THE ENQUIRY

Questions that might arise:

  • Is it worse to be deaf than hearing? What are the advantages of hearing? What are the disadvantages of being deaf?
  • Is better to be able to use sign-language than to be able to use ordinary spoken English?
  • Is deafness a disability?
  • What is a disability? Could it sometimes be a disability to hear?
  • What’s the difference between a disability and an illness? Are there any respects in which you are disabled? Are there some things you cannot physically do?
  • If you could take a pill that would make you super-sensitive to sounds (like a bat!), would you take it?
  • What are some of the negative attitudes that people have towards disability? What would be a positive attitude?
  • Should sign language be taught in schools to hearing children, so they can communicate effectively with deaf children?
  • Should all television programmes come with sign language?

THE ENQUIRY: SOME PHILOSOPHICAL POINTS

A number of general issues could arise in the course of the enquiry:

  • What counts as a disability (a definitional issue)?
  • An obvious first answer is to characterise a disability as the lack of an ability to perform some specified type of task. Deafness, on this account, is a disability because a deaf person can’t hear. But clearly there are lots of things that people can’t do which don’t qualify as disabilities. I can’t fly, or run a mile in ten seconds, or hear the sound of a mouse that is running about in the next-door house, but this doesn’t make me disabled.
  • Perhaps, then, disability needs to be defined in terms of impairment of normal human functioning. But what is normal human functioning. Is it a statistical notion? If 90% of the population lost their eyesight due to a global pandemic, would this mean that blindness ceased to be a disability? And does something become a disability if it constitutes a social disadvantage due to widespread prejudice? Does being a woman, for example, count as a disability in a sexist society?
  • What conditions are disabilities (an empirical issue)? Is deafness such a condition? Is blindness? Is lacking the ability to write, or spell, or do arithmetic?
  • How should we respond to disability (a moral issue)? Sometimes it seems that we should try to ignore disability (e.g. we should pay no heed to physical disability in university admissions) but sometimes it seems that we should factor it into our decision-making (e.g. by providing hearing aids/wheelchairs). This raises a question about when it’s appropriate to ignore disability and when it’s appropriate to pay attention. What’s the principle at work here? And, in those cases where it is appropriate to pay attention, what kind of attention should be paid? Should we, for example, provide separate facilities for the disabled or should they always be integrated into mainstream society (special schools v. mainstream schooling)? Should we offer financial compensation to those suffering from disabilities? Should we spend money on research on e.g. blindness or deafness? If so, how much? And does our duty to accommodate the needs of the disabled depend on the numbers involved? If, for example, there were only one hundred people in Northern Ireland who used wheelchairs, would the case for wheelchair access to public buildings be weakened?

1