Page 16 - FIS_World_May_2015

Debunking TOK
The Understanding of why Conversations may Fall Apart
Two years ago I asked an FIS teacher how the school taught systems for ethical conduct of life. Was Philosophy included in the Upper School? What about Ethics? Rhetoric? What I learned was that FIS teaches “t-okay,” something that sounded techie and cute until the teacher clarified, “T-O-K: Theory of Knowledge.”
“Wow!” I thought. “I wish I had learned that!” But what exactly was it? The explanation was cut short by parenting multitasking gridlock and it wasn’t until this year that I heard it again, that “t-okay”, floating in an International Baccalaureate (IB) classroom like a spoonful of cod liver oil. Clearly, there was an elephant in the room, and I was on a mission to debunk TOK. What was it about? Why did students find it so testing? How future-oriented was it?
I started with Daniel Toyne, Head of TOK at FIS. “To put it simply, Theory of Knowledge is about understanding what and how we know,” he said. “It is taught in Grades 11 and 12 and addresses two questions: How do I know? How do we know? To do this we consider six areas of knowledge and explore four ways of knowing: Reason, Language, Emotion and Sense-Perception.”
“Once you get into it, everything starts making sense”
Alessia, Gr 12
Student exploration ultimately leads to a 10-minute presentation on a real life subject and an essay at the end of the course. “Students must support their arguments with explicit reference to what they learned in terms of key areas of knowledge and key ways of knowing,” Mr. Toyne said.
History and vision justify the important role of TOK in the IB. When the founders of the IB set about developing an International program, they didn’t want to have Philosophy. But TOK is rooted there – it is essentially Epistemology, the branch of Philosophy that studies the nature and scope of knowledge and justified belief, and one of the main areas of inquiry of Philosophy along with Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, Aesthetics and the specialist areas.
Mr. Toyne sees the course as an investment in the student’s intellectual future. “Its full value comes later in life, when they have more experience and maturity, and it will resonate throughout their lives,” he says. “But it doesn’t come easy. TOK is an academic gear change, unlike any course before. It’s challenging and can be confusing: you may have the intellectual but not the emotional maturity,
and without this, it doesn’t make an impact on you. But there comes a moment when all suddenly fits together.”
Grade 12 IB student Alessia corroborates this “aha” moment, “Once you get into it, everything starts making sense,” she says. She explains, “some find it hard because they think that in order to get an ‘A ‘you need to think a certain way. But you are free to think whatever you want, you just have to be able to justify those thoughts.”Training a student to think, rather than teaching content is a powerful method for learning.
Alessia has enjoyed TOK because “it has clearly helped me go beyond preconceived ideas. For instance, we tend to believe that to make good art you need emotion, and for math you need reason. But art needs reason, say, choosing one color based on what you know from color theory. And emotion – the confidence, a sense of beauty – also plays a big part in math. TOK teaches you to challenge yourself and what you already know, or believe you know, but it doesn’t teach you to be a skeptic. It actually helps you support your convictions.”
Mr. Toyne pointed out that at the heart of TOK is a deconstruction of preconception. “We start with challenging the idea that if you think differently from me, then you have a problem.” He recalled a stark example from 1989, when “Tank Man” stood in front of a column of tanks in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square . ”In Western media, Tank Man is the underdog heroically confronting the might of tyranny. But in Eastern media, the hero is the driver of that tank, whose heroic grace told him not to drive over that man.”
On the value of TOK for the students’ futures, two thoughts describe it best. Mr. Toyne says, “The IB Organization mission contains the value that others, with their differences, may also be right”. And from Alessia, ”You come to understand why controversial conversations may fall apart.”
Better aptitude for the globalized world our kids will inherit, and their future that we can’t envisage, is hard to find.
Maria Monteiro, FIS Parent
14 FIS World February 2016