Yes, I too found the solar eclipse thrilling, and a little spooky. The summer sunshine grew dim and a chill settled over the garden. Curved bites appeared in the dappled shadows of leaves. Like many others, we peered at light falling through the pinholes of a homemade cardboard box to see the image of the […]
Read more Today I offer you morsels from a book I’m reading as a delectable snack for your mind. Beautifully written, it reminds me that, in our course, we look at areas of knowledge not just for their description and analysis but also for their wonder. In many ways, I feel TOK to be a celebration of […]
Read more It’s easy to miss the point entirely when treating Indigenous Knowledge in TOK. It’s not a special “category” of knowledge, even though it is listed in our syllabus in parallel with other areas of knowledge. Clustering up indigenous groups across the world to look at their knowledge does not enable us to treat that knowledge […]
Read moreDiffering perspectives are easiest to see when they come into conflict. As a result, it’s tempting for Theory of Knowledge students to seize on conflicts as topics for presentations — and for us as teachers to use them as class examples to illustrate differences in perspectives. As I’m about to do here! I worry a […]
Read more It’s not true to say that all teaching’s better with stories – but there’s enough truth in this exaggeration that I feel like saying it anyhow, and I hope that even TOK teachers will forgive me my hyperbole. Stories can catch student interest, illustrate points, and open up lots of questions. I’ve just read one […]
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Oh no! More suggestion, in an article I’m reading, that gaining reliable knowledge from the media might be even harder than sticking to a diet! Just as we’re assaulted with tempting displays of candy and chocolate as we head for the supermarket check-out, we’re faced with screaming headlines, awful photos, and our own fear and excitement […]
Read more Which of her eager suitors will make the right guess in the gamble – and win the beautiful Portia and her fortune? Mathematician Alex Bellos gives us a new twist to a story familiar from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: a lovely and virtuous heiress is compelled by her late father’s will to marry the […]
Read more In ethics, it’s the dilemmas that grab the headlines. They crash into the news for reasons similar to almost all news: they stand out from a norm of people muddling along in broad accord as they judge right from wrong; they sometimes pit groups of people against each other in noisy conflict; and they often […]
Read more Can we define and measure happiness – put statistics to an emotion? Can we rank countries of the world quantitatively for the degree to which their people are happy? The fifth annual World Happiness Report , released by the United Nations on March 20, 2017 has subject matter likely to appeal to students. For Theory of Knowledge teachers, […]
Read more Well, we’ve done it at last. We’ve hit the Big Time. Suddenly the topics that we chat about every day in class – such as concepts of truth and reliability, the nature of “facts”, methods of validating or rejecting knowledge claims, and the dynamic and formative role of perspectives – have come into the glaring […]
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