The Story of an Elephant and the Blind Man

A simple exercise to practice the importance of appreciating diversity. Suitable for a low-resource classroom. 

This is a folk tale from India. You can rehearse the story several times and tell it or have students act it out rather than reading it aloud or having students read it alone. Before you present the story to the class, ask students to give their interpretations of the word "see." You may randomly pick or get students to volunteer to answer this question. 

Objectives

• Students will describe different perspectives and how those perspectives impact an individual's point of view.

• Students will articulate their own perspectives and how those perspectives may impact their perceptions of others and situations.

Activity 

Before reading, reinforce the idea that "seeing" can mean perceiving something visually or understanding an idea after listening to the answers given by student. Ask students to listen  to the story for examples of both definitions. Write the two illustrations on the board. Students will examine the importance of perspective in how people perceive things

Debrief with students, using the questions below.

After students have heard the story, use the following questions to guide discussion of how differences in perspective can make it difficult for people to communicate. Students should be encouraged to apply the moral of the folk tale to real-life situations.

Debriefing

1. What happens in the story when each blind man "sees" the elephant? Why were there six different ideas about the elephant? Were any of the men right about the elephant? Were any of them completely wrong?

1. What did the blind men learn from the Rajah? What does the storyteller want us to learn from this tale?

1. Do problems like this happen in real life? Think of times when arguments or misunderstandings have occurred because people saw situations from different points of view. Describe what happened.

1. How does it feel when another person doesn't "see" something the way you do? How can you address those differences in perceptions?

1. What if the men in this story were not blind? Would they still have different perceptions about elephants? Why or why not?

1. Does the story give you any ideas about how these problems can be solved? What are some steps you can take to understand why another person doesn't see things the way you do? 

Other add ons ;

1.  Ask students to write a story in their own words that includes the conversation the six men might have had as they journeyed home.
2. Have students write original stories or skits that illustrate the importance of perspective-awareness.
3. Ask students to write and perform a skit based on the story. The skit could be performed for other classes, and the performers could guide a debriefing with their audience.
4. Have students work in groups of six to create group illustrations of the story. Alternatively, have them use recycled materials to create a sculpture of the elephant combining the perspectives of the six blind men. This can be used at the exhibition. 
5. Encourage students to talk about misunderstandings they experience or observe that seem to be the result of clashes between points of view. Work with students to role-play behavior that resolves the misunderstanding. Let them take real-life examples from the class. 
6. If your class is advanced and students are diverse, you may ask them to provide some examples of differences in how people of different communities view the world. How we see our neighboring country Indians? Chinese? or they see us ? What they have learnt from these differences? How they have addressed them?

In this lesson, we illustrate how different people can have distinctly different perceptions of the same thing. Students discuss how each blind men's arguments differ when understanding an elephant, and even when presented with a real elephant, each man could "see" only what he already believed to be true. The story and this lesson is intended to encourage students to develop perspective awareness. An awareness that each of us creates a unique view of the world based on personal experience, language, and culture.

You may give a copy of this to each student , if it's a language class, you can talk about the language aspect too. 

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, “Hey, there is an elephant in the village today.” They had no idea what an elephant was.  They decided: “Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway.” All of them went where the elephant was. Every one of them touched the elephant. “Hey, the elephant is a pillar,” said the first man, who touched his leg. “Oh no! It is like a rope,” said the second man, who touched the tail. “Oh no! It is like a thick branch of a tree,” said the third man, who touched the trunk of the elephant. ”It is like a big hand fan,” said the fourth man, who touched the ear of the elephant. “It is like a huge wall,” said the fifth man, who touched the belly of the elephant. “It is like a solid pipe,” said the sixth man, who touched the tusk of the elephant. They began to argue about the elephant and every one of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man passed by and he saw them. He stopped and asked: “What is the matter?” They said, “We cannot agree to what the elephant is like.” Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man explained to them, “All of you are right. The reason each one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched a different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features you described.” “Oh!” everyone said. There was no more arguing. They felt happy that they each of them were right. Together that had seen the WHOLE elephant.