The Quest for the Stone of Wisdom - Student Handbook

An introduction to philosophy using creative and critical thinking.

The comic strip accompanying this course is a single story that has been designed to act as a springboard into the philosophical issues that are then explored in 18 units. It is also hoped that the comic itself will engage considerable student enthusiasm before you even begin discussing the philosophy.

The thinking and writing section is designed to encourage students to reflect on an issue and take a tentative stand on it before they begin discussing the issue with others. This issues raised in the thinking and writing section are usually brought up again later in the unit.

Discussion questions are designed to explore a number of facets of the issue.

The "What I learnt from this discussion"  section is designed to help students clarify, synthesise and summarise the understanding they have gained from the discussion.

There are also class exercises and reasoning exercises included in the Student's Handbook:

• class exercises incorporating a wide variety of teaching and learning strategies (role-play, drama, group work, class discussion, individual reflection)
• reasoning exercises which appear intermittently throughout the Handbook to teach some important reasoning skills, such as:
  • coming to conclusions (Unit 2)
  • fact v opinions (Unit 5)
  • difference in degree v difference in kind (Unit 6)
  • using evidence (Unit 8)
  • techniques of argument (Unit 10)