INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS DAY

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

Eleanor Roosevelt

ACTIVITIES

- Please, try to find out who Eleanor Roosevelt was, and what she did for Human Rights.

-  Do not forget to watch : " THE STORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS"

INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ELIMINATION OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Watch this video:

WE ARE BACK...

Welcome students!!!
I hope you face this new school year with a great motivation.
"Ethical and Civic Education" is a new subject for you.  It will give you the chance to get to know yourself better, to realize about the human mechanisms to make decisions, to be aware of the moral values we can choose in order to live better, as individuals and as a society,...  and much more!!
We will have the chance to THINK, at least during two classes, about all this.
I hope you enjoy it!

FAREWELL...

It has been a pleasure...  Yes, it was really nice to teach you.  Have  you all a wonderful summer!!  And, of course, BE HAPPY!

FEMINISM
Feminism is both an intellectual commitment and a political movement that seeks justice for women and the end of sexism in all forms.


Answer the following questions...
-  Who were Mary Wollstonecraft, Flora Tristán, Clara Campoamor and Simone de Beauvoir? 
-  What did they do for this movement?
-  What is the difference between sex and gender from the feminist point of view?


HISTORY OF FEMINISM IN PICTURES (USA)

WORLD FAIR TRADE DAY

Today is World Fair Trade Day.                                           

What is Fair Trade?
Try to find out through this web.....http://www.wfto.com/
And read the 2011 Declaration.

How we fight against discrimination

Read the text and watch the video of this link:

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/human-rights/fight-against-discrimination/

THE WAVE

TRY TO REMEMBER THE FILM WE WATCHED BEFORE EASTER HOLIDAYS


What was all about?

In 1967, at the Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, World History teacher Ron Jones was asked about the Holocaust by a student. "Could it happen here?". According to the press release accompanying the latest retelling of the events that followed, "Jones came up with an unusual answer. He decided to have a two week experiment in dictatorship. His idea was to explain fascism to his class through a game, nothing more. He never intended what resulted, where his class would be turned into a Fascist environment. Where students gave up their freedom for the prospect of being superior to their neighbors. 

Monday morning he straightened the classroom, dimmed the lights and played Wagnerian music. The word "discipline" was written on the blackboard. He then had the students sit up straight in their chairs with hands placed flat across the small of their backs. In this setting, he devoted the remainder of the class to the topic of discipline. 

By the second day, Jones developed a special greeting, a wave. It became known as the Third Wave, and if students saw each other outside class, they were to use it. In his lectures, Jones went from "discipline," to "strength through community," and then to "strength through action." 

By midweek, his "experiment" expanded to sixty students, and by the week's end, more than two hundred were participating. Other teachers and the school's principal stood by and watched. 

The first sign of concern came when some students had taken it uponthemselves to report others who did not conform. After just four days, things got out of hand. Jones feared for the safety of a few students who refused to participate. To his dismay and alarm, the experiment was so blindly embraced by the students, that he cut the project short. "Initially I just wanted to show my students how powerful the pressure to belong can be, but the exercise got out of control. A momentum began to build that I couldn't slow, or even deter. I became frightened by the day-to-day happenings in class, and was forced to call it off," recalls Jones. 

Overnight, Jones became the subject of national controversy, sparking discussion on the appropriateness of exposing young adults to life's realities. To some, he was an innovative hero and teacher; to others he was a Communist. Many people were shocked and embarrassed that the same mentality which led to the Holocaust could develop so quickly, in 1967, in a pristine all-American setting, and an academic town no less, home to the well-known Stanford University.

You can watch it again and answer the following questions:
What do you think about the teacher?
Do you think his experiment in class was a good way to teach fascism?
What do you think about the students?
Which student do you think that took part of the wave more seriously?  Why?
What do you think about the girl who did not agree with the wave?
How do you think she felt?

SEARCHING AGAINST PREJUDICE

HOMOSEXUALITY has been stigmatized for century upon century, and in many cultures across the world and through time, mostly seeking to stigmatize relationships between members of the same sex. Almost invariably, when it is criminalized, those who criminalize it (or would do so) refer to it as the "crime against nature" or the "sin against nature." The presumption is that homosexual behavior is a perversion, and a uniquely human perversion, engaged in as the result of what is presumed to be a learned attraction to members of the same sex.

There's only one problem with that assumption: None of it is true.

Just as in humans, animals often form long-term same-sex relationships. In species in which this normally occurs in heterosexual couples, that shouldn't come as a great surprise, but it does come as a surprise in species where heterosexual pair-bonds don't normally form for long if at all. This is true of bottlenose dolphins, which are not known to form heterosexual pair bonds, but which do in fact form homosexual pair bonds, including sex, and often lasting for life. A 1999 review by researcher Bruce Bagemihl shows that homosexual behavior has been observed in close to 1,500 species, ranging from primates to gut worms, and is well documented for 500 of them. Animal sexual behavior takes many different forms, even within the same species. The motivations for and implications of these behaviors have yet to be fully understood, since most species have yet to be fully studied.

There's clearly a wide range of homosexual behaviors in the animal kingdom. It's widespread, common and impossible to deny or explain away any longer. Homosexuality is natural as green grass in summer, and it's high time we accepted that fact.

The birds do it. It's been described in 130 species of birds. The southeastern blueberry bees do it. Same sex pairs of animals kiss and caress each other with obvious affection and tenderness. Male pairs and female pairs form long-lasting pair-bonds and reject, threaten, even fight off potential opposite sex partners when they are presented with them. Same sex partners engage in almost every conceivable means of sexual expression throughout the animal kingdom.

WHAT IF YOU WERE GAY?

Watch this video and try to write down all the conditionals on your notebook.

WELFARE STATE

READ  this article from the Guardian. What is the opinion of the journalist?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/mar/31/new-answer-welfare-socialism

International Women's Day

International Women's Day is celebrated the 8th of March all around the world, and this year 2011 we commemorate its 100th anniversary.
In our school, you will be able to visit an exhibition at the big hall during this week.

Watch this video and try to write on your notebook what you understand:

Today is the Day against Genital Female Mutilation

Read about the International Day against Genital Female Mutilation (Ablation):
http://www.unicef.org/protection/index_genitalmutilation.html

NEXT EXAM...

On February the 10th, you'll have to do an exam on Ethical Theories.   This is what you should revise and know:

-  What is an ethical theory and what are the questions the philosophers                      want to answer with them
-  Aristotle's theory of virtue.
-  Utilitarianism.
-  Kant's deontology.
-  Please revise the folowing concepts: virtue, character, habit, prudency, mean, hedonism, categorical imperative, hypothetical imperative, autonomy, heteronomy, dignity,...(you can look these concepts up in the dictionary-link on your left).

Please, study as much as you can, and ask me all the doubts next wednesday!!!

School Day of Non-violence and Peace

 The "School Day of Non-violence and Peace", and also known as World or International Day of Non-violence and Peace, is a pioneering, non-state, non-governmental, non-official, independent, free and voluntary initiative of Non-violent and Pacifying Education, which is now practised in schools all over the world and in which centres of education, teachers and students of all levels and from all countries are invited to take part.

 It advocates a permanent education in and for harmony, tolerance, solidarity, respect for human rights, non-violence and peace.It is observed on January 30th or thereabouts every year, on the anniversary of the death of Mahatma Gandhi. In countries with a Southern Hemisphere school calendar, it can be observed on March 30 or thereabouts.

 Its basic message is: "Universal Love, Non-violence and Peace. Universal Love is better than egoism, Non-violence is better than violence, and Peace is better than war".
 The method of teaching this activity of education in values it can be freely applied in each centre of education according to its own teaching style.


Our School is going to do different activities:


- A Charity Run.  It will take place on Monday  at 12:00 p.m.  
- A Jumble Sale. 
- Exhibitions
-  And other interesting activities... We'll sing the following song....

Give peace a chance by John Lennon

What is a moral dilemma?

Two different definitions:
A moral dilemma is the  situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two or more moral alternatives, and especially when the alternatives are equally undesirable.

An ethical dilemma is a situation that will often involve a conflict between moral imperatives, in which to obey one would result in transgressing another. This is also called an ethical paradox since in moral philosophy, paradox plays a central role in ethics debates. 


Now, watch this video and try to understand as much as you can!  
Do not panic! you can watch it several times...  After...write  your opinion on this dilemma, and a short summary of what you have understood.

A funnier version of the trolley dilemma:

Watch this!:  The trolley problem

What is this all about...?

Ethical and civic education is a subject in which we try to learn the accumulated philosophical knowledge on ethics...

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice, etc.

and on civics...

Civics is the study of rights and duties of citizenship. In other words, it is the study of government with attention to the role of citizens ― as opposed to external factors ― in the operation and oversight of government.

Within a given political or ethical tradition,civics refers to educating the citizens. The history of civics dates back to the earliest theories of civics by Confucius in ancient China and Plato in ancient Greece. These traditions in general have led to modern distinctions between the West and the East, and two very different concepts of right and justice and ethics in public life. (wikipedia)

Ethical theories

Yes, I´m  Aristotle and, as you can see, I'm thinking... 
What am I thinking about?  
I'm thinking about you, and how to explain to you my Theory of Virtue.
You should visit this web and read ONLY the introduction, please.
 It might help you!


http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-eth/


After, could you write the definitions of the following concepts: 
moral virtue, habit, mean and character on your notebook?
And, could you find out or try to search how did I die, where and why?
Thank you!