7/29/2019 Educating for Friendship

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Educatingforfriendship

Couldthepracticeoffriendship,repairsomeofthe

fragilityweseetodayincitizenbehavior?GermnGmezVeas

ABSTRACT

Itseemsappropriatethatschoolscouldassume,withgreaterintensity,thechallenge

ofinstallingtheeductionoffriendshipasaprimaryobjective,toachievethepurposeofgivingeffecttothevalueofcitizenship.

7/29/2019 Educating for Friendship

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Educating for friendship

For our students to achieve a more human perspective in the configuration of their

vital horizons, capable of acquiring easily the interest of being better persons in

building a society where freedom and the respect and the common well being

prevails, I believe principals and teachers should incorporate as parto f the

curriculum, friendship as the articulation point of the values they teach.

Since ancient times, philosophers have seen that friendship is a virtue that enables

people to be happy and lead a constructive life for themselves and also to positively

transform the communities in which they engage. So understood Aristotle, who

dedicated in his Ethics important chapters to explaining why friendship is a moral

virtue fundamental to life. With a more focused approach to human psychological

progress, Cicero put the accent on the premise that friendship can consolidate

personal identity, noting that on the basis of dialogue with friends, each person

will consolidate the ethical virtues, insisting that "we are not born for ourselves,

but a part of our birth we owe to our country, the other to our parents, and other to

our friends". Probably these were some of the considerations that led Kant to say

that true friendship should be elevated to the status of an inescapable moral duty,

independent of the will itself, and therefore, would distinguish the person in its

highest human condition.

What philosophers have described again and again as properties of the friendship,

is the core of citizenship, and today, perhaps as never before in our history, it

seems necessary to implement it. From this basis, we think, must be revitalized so

from its inception was the pedagogical mission, namely the formation of citizens

with a strong character that drives the seeking personal fulfillment, that same

commitment, a commitment with the common quest for fulfillment

Could the practice of friendship, repair some of the fragility we see today in citizenbehavior?

Germn Gmez Veas

Consultant in educat ionandcol legeprofessor , author of the texts What is

ethics?and, Educat ion for C i t izenship