In my part of the world, there’s an entire public holiday built around a particular emotion: gratitude. In 2015, Thanksgiving Day falls on October 12 for us Canadians and November 26 for our American neighbours. Although this year I’m not home cooking a traditional turkey (I’m off travelling in Romania!), I wanted to wish all […]
Read more (Originally posted on Activating TOK) Did you know that green coffee bean extract can help you lose weight? No? Me neither! Today, I’d like to propose a class discussion on thinking critically about media knowledge claims for products that yield fabulous (literally) medical benefits. The discussion is given a caffeine lift by a bite-sized example from a year […]
Read more (Originally posted on Activating TOK) “Knowledge”. “Understanding”. “Truth”. Your students might want to argue with the way Destin Sandlin uses the terms — and so will you — as he struggles to learn how to ride what he calls the Backwards Brain Bicycle. This video is likely to provoke ripples of laughter and to animate discussion on “knowing how” and on memory as […]
Read more (Originally posted on Activating TOK) Today, a PS to this past week’s posts on classifying human beings. What do our categories highlight, and what do they exclude? My past two posts have used current examples from the media to raise knowledge questions about “race” and the contentious balance between biological heritage and culture or ethnicity (a balance […]
Read more (Originally posted on Activating TOK) I ended my last post with questions about Rachel Dolezal’s claims to be black: “Are her personal knowledge claims the deciding factor, in your mind, for determining her racial identity? Why or why not?” What has captured media attention, it seems, is the way in which her story pits her own personal […]
Read more (Originally posted on Activating TOK) A story currently running in the media jolts me out of summertime diversions, straight back to TOK. I find knowledge questions about classification magnetic, especially when the categories constructed have social and emotional resonance as they are applied to human beings – as has the categorization of “race”.
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