What is TOK? Why is it challenging?

Theory of Knowledge, at first, can be difficult to frame as a course because few students have followed a similar class in the past.  While you have had language and literature, math, science, history, and art classes, you have never had a class on the Theory of Knowledge.  It is new and at times abstract, and these qualities combine to make the experience challenging. 

So, at the beginning of a new academic year, we should review the aims and objectives of the Theory of Knowledge course.  Each student and parent should clearly understand its purpose and basic content.   The course guide outlines five aims: 

1)      develop a fascination with the richness of knowledge as a human endeavour, and an understanding of the empowerment that follows from reflecting upon it

2)      develop an awareness of how knowledge is constructed, critically examined, evaluated and renewed, by communities and individuals

3)      encourage students to reflect on their experiences as learners, in everyday life and in the Diploma Programme, and to make connections between academic disciplines and between thoughts, feelings and actions

4)      encourage an interest in the diversity of ways of thinking and ways of living of individuals and communities, and an awareness of personal and ideological assumptions, including participants’ own

5)      encourage consideration of the responsibilities originating from the relationship between knowledge, the community and the individual as citizen of the world.

The course guide further specifies six outcomes.  That is, after taking the course, the student should be able to:

1)      analyse critically knowledge claims, their underlying assumptions and their implications

2)      generate questions, explanations, conjectures, hypotheses, alternative ideas and possible solutions in response to knowledge issues concerning areas of knowledge, ways of knowing and students’ own experience as learners

3)      demonstrate an understanding of different perspectives on knowledge issues

4)      draw links and make effective comparisons between different approaches to knowledge issues that derive from areas of knowledge, ways of knowing, theoretical positions and cultural values

5)      demonstrate an ability to give a personal, self-aware response to a knowledge issue

6)      formulate and communicate ideas clearly with due regard for accuracy and academic honesty.

In class we will put these aims and outcomes into our own language.  But one can see that TOK is an ambitious course.  In simplest terms, it is a course on thinking critically about our experience as learners and knowers.   We gain an awareness of how we learn and know as human beings in different academic classes and in different cultures.   TOK's fundamental question is, How do I know?   

The TOK Diagram clarifies the scope of the class.  In the center we see the Knower, then the Four Ways of Knowing (Sensory Perception, Emotion, Language, Reason),  then the subjects of Natural Sciences, Mathematics, Art, Human Sciences, History, and Ethics.  Taking the fundamental question of TOK, we examine in class how we know through each of these interacting ways of knowing and subjects. 

 

In short, we take a comparative overview of how knowledge is created.  Each subject creates knowledge in a different manner:

• The Natural Sciences (e.g., Biology, Chemistry, Physics) use the Scientific Method (Observation, Hypothesis, Test) to create knowledge.  Each step of the method can raise knowledge issues.  Key concepts include hypothesis, theory, and law (which is most important?).  Many other questions can be raised, but to take one:  how do sensory perception, emotion, language and reason condition the creation of scientific knowledge?
• Mathematics is a body of knowledge, a system of ideas, and a tool.  It constructs knowledge through axioms and theorems (what are these?).  It uses proofs to demonstrate the validity of the theorems.  How does math become creative?  Is mathematics value-free?
• The Arts use a variety of media for a variety of purposes.  What is the purpose of art?   Is it to create beauty?  Is it meant to teach society?   What should it teach?  Is it for self-expression?  Is there truth in art?  Can we test it?  Is there an ethical dimension to art?  Can art harm an individual or society?
• The Human Sciences (e.g., Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Economics, Education) use the Scientific Method in order to understand human beings and their behavior.  How well can this be done?  Observation and description are central activities, but testing can be difficult or impossible.  If a theory in human science cannot be tested, is it a scientific theory?  Or if a theory has little consistent predictive value (as can happen in economics), why consider it scientific? 
• History is the study of the past.  Why can we not consider this a human science?  Are all perspectives on history equally valid?  Is there a best method in writing history?   Is there an ethical dimension to the writing of history?
• Ethics is the study of how right and wrong are determined.  Are right and wrong purely cultural constructs?  Can there be a universal understanding of right and wrong?  What are the most common moral philosophies?  Does Ethics impact the other areas of knowledge?

Many more knowledge issues can be raised.  There is a sense in which every subject teacher is a TOK teacher because the subject teacher can make you more aware of the subject-defining concepts and methods, as well as the common knowledge issues of that particular way of creating knowledge. 

Last year in the first semester of TOK, you examined the Knower and the Four Ways of Knowing.  In the second semester you investigated Natural Sciences, Math, and Art.   What remains this year are the Human Sciences, History, and Ethics.  Finally, we must complete the course assessment, which is based on an internally assessed presentation and an externally assessed essay.

Why is TOK Challenging?

The IBO describes  the Theory of Knowledge class as its flagship course.  But why do students find it so challenging?  In part, it is challenging because you must take an aerial view of learning and knowing while at the same time peering into yourself for your own convictions and assumptions.   You must compare and contrast how one learns and knows in different areas, noting the advantages and disadvantages of each.  You examine very profound and complex questions.  And this is why  TOK is especially challenging:  it often focuses on open questions that do not have one correct answer. Much of elementary and secondary school education, often for quite proper motives, is focused on obtaining the single correct answer.  TOK is not like this.  There can be many correct answers, or many answers with different degrees of correctness, and one must make a well-reasoned argument, taking into account the counterarguments, in support of one's own conclusion. 

In ltalian licei there is an excellent three year course in the history of philosophy and students have the opportunity to survey the great philosophical thinkers of the past.   The IBO's course in TOK is applied philosophy.  One will find the names of great thinkers and their concepts judiciously present in the course, but the emphasis is consistently on learning to think critically about learning and knowing.  The roots of the IBO's TOK class stretch into the Informal Logic and Critical Thinking movements, but more than a general course in critical thinking, which is required and popular in many American universities, TOK is focused through the IBO's mission statement.  The aim is to develop critical and compassionate members of the global community.