{"id":1621,"date":"2016-09-22T08:23:36","date_gmt":"2016-09-22T12:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/nwcenter\/wordpress\/?post_type=lessonplans&p=1621"},"modified":"2024-09-25T18:18:50","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T01:18:50","slug":"blind-painter","status":"publish","type":"teachertoolkit","link":"https:\/\/plato-philosophy.org\/teachertoolkit\/blind-painter\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blind Painter"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Materials<\/strong>: A blackboard or whiteboard to draw on, blank pieces of paper for students to draw on, crayons or colored pencils if possible.<\/p>\n

Description<\/strong>: Frame this exercise by making the point that there are two key skills we want to develop when we do philosophy. These are, first, the ability to communicate clearly and second, the ability to listen actively. When we do philosophy, it\u2019s very important that we learn to express ourselves with clarity, to say what we mean in a way that others can understand us. It\u2019s also vital that we listen actively: we need to ask questions when we don\u2019t understand, to rephrase and restate what others say, and to engage in dialogue with our fellow philosophers in order to advance mutual understanding.<\/div>\n
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This activity offers an opportunity for students to practice those two skills \u2014 communicating clearly and listening actively \u2014 in a way that\u2019s fun, but which also gives them an authentic taste of what it\u2019s like to communicate effectively \u2014 and ineffectively, too, for that matter.<\/p>\n

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To start this exercise, pair students up, and then have them arrange their chairs back-to-back so that one of the members of the pair faces the board and the other\u00a0 faces away. The student who faces away from the board needs to have a surface to draw on (usually a notebook), a blank piece of paper, and something to draw with. A crayon or marker is ideal since students will eventually display what they draw to their classmates, so something bright and easy to see from across a classroom works best.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The explanation of the exercise goes something like this: \u201cThis exercise is called \u2018Blind Painter.\u2019 The way it works is that the one of you facing away from the board is\u00a0 a\u00a0painter, but you are blind to everything except what you are painting. The good news is you have a set of eyes to help you. So, I am going to draw a picture on the board and you, the painter, are to try to recreate it. However, you can\u2019t look at what I\u2019m drawing; only your \u201ceyes\u201d can do that. Your \u201ceyes\u201d will have to describe to you what I\u2019m drawing. You need to keep in mind two rules: first, the \u201ceyes\u201d cannot look at your paper and second, the painter cannot look at what I am drawing. Consequently, you will have to use those two skills I mentioned \u2014 communicating clearly and listening actively \u2014 in order to successfully complete your drawing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Note that students should feel comfortable engaging in a discussion with each other, but that they should do so in a kind of \u201cstage whisper\u201d since, with some many students\u00a0talking simultaneously, the room can get pretty loud.<\/p>\n

Commence drawing a picture on the board. Do so slowly, one or two lines at a time, so that the pairs of students can keep up. Facilitators should monitor the process to make sure they don\u2019t too far ahead. Any picture is fine, but something simple works best, for example, a simple little scene with a house and a mountain and a tree \u2014 the sort of drawing a small child would make.<\/p>\n

When the drawing is completed, make a box around the whole picture to indicate that it\u2019s finished. Invite the painters to take a look at what been drawn and to see how close their drawing is to the original. Ask all the painters to come to the front of the room and proudly display their drawings. Then facilitate a question-and-answer session about what worked and what didn\u2019t and how, perhaps, painters and \u201ceyes\u201d could do a better job of communicating and listening.<\/p>\n

Typically, painters commend their \u201ceyes\u201d for giving precise instructions, especially for describing what to draw in terms of recognizable shapes, like triangles, squares, and easily identifiable objects like clouds and letters. The most common complaint is that their \u201ceyes\u201d gave confusing information in regards to the placement \u2014 right, left, up, or\u00a0down \u2014 of items in the drawing. Brainstorm together about how to build upon what worked and improve upon what didn\u2019t for the next go-round.<\/p>\n

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At the conclusion of this discussion, students get back into their pairs, with the former \u201ceyes\u201d now playing the role of painter and vice-versa. This time around, it\u2019s interesting to draw a much less easy-to-follow drawing. (Usually, we draw\u00a0a cartoon head, something like Fred Flintstone or Homer Simpson. Unlike the first drawing, this one doesn\u2019t have easily identifiable objects like trees and houses. Typically, therefore, students have a far more difficult time of recreating the drawing.)<\/p>\n

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At the conclusion of this drawing, again invite the painters to compare their works to the one on the board. Ask them to come to the front of the room and again proudly display what they\u2019ve done. (Without fail, the drawings are more interesting this time around, even though they tend not to look very much like what was\u00a0drawn on the board.)<\/p>\n

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At this point, lead a discussion about why this time around was so much trickier and what could have been done to make it easier for the painters to match my drawing. (Sometimes, a discussion about the nature of art emerges here.\u00a0Students often want to talk about whether the pieces in the second round \u2014 which admittedly look little like what was drawn on the board \u2014 aren\u2019t, in fact, more interesting works of art than those in the first round.) Often students want to talk about whether or not a painter has \u201cfailed\u201d if his or her artwork doesn\u2019t match what the original picture. Occasionally, some students get very exercised about their drawing (or their partner\u2019s) not looking like what the teacher has drawn. From time to time, this can lead to a rich discussion of whether or not it was fair that the second time was so much harder. A teacher might put this up for grabs as a topic to inquire about: is it fair that some people face harder challenges than others? If so, why? If not, why not? What if facing those challenges leads to superior outcomes (like more artistic drawings?) Would you rather be an expert at something simple or a novice at something complex?<\/p>\n

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The main thing that comes out of the discussion, though, is the value of communicating effectively. Students really do come to see how what they say can be interpreted and\/or misinterpreted by someone else. And the connection to\u00a0 philosophical discussion can therefore be made pretty easily.<\/p>\n

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The other point that is worth mentioning is that sometimes our best efforts to communicate effectively fail because we don\u2019t really have the complete picture of what we\u2019re trying to share with each other. This is illustrated pretty well by the second round of the exercise. Because what is being illustrated doesn\u2019t really become obvious until the artist is finished \u2014 that is, it doesn\u2019t really look like the head of Fred Flintstone until the last few marks are made \u2014 it\u2019s hard for us to communicate what we\u2019re seeing. Had a set of \u201ceyes,\u201d though, for instance, waited until the drawing was done and then told his or her painter to draw a cartoon head of Fred Flintstone, the drawing might have come out much closer to what was put on the board. Students tend to understand appreciate this point and are able to see the connection to the study of philosophy quite easily. But just in case, it\u2019s worthwhile making that point explicitly: philosophy is like this; sometimes it doesn\u2019t make sense until we get to the very end. We have to be willing to \u2018live in the question\u2019 and allow the whole picture to emerge. Then, when we\u2019re all finished, we can look back at what we\u2019ve done and understand what it all meant.<\/p>\n

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Again, having done philosophy even just a couple of times, students will recognize this dynamic and appreciate how familiar it is to the practice of philosophical inquiry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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