Theory of Knowledge Exhibition
Sometimes, things of genius are born of quite pragmatic needs. When the International Baccalaureate was first founded, there were French students both at the United World College of the Atlantic where the idea for a new international qualification was born, and the Ecolint in Geneva where many of the early supporters of the IB worked. The French government at that time had a requirement that students studied philosophy, so Alec Peterson knew he had to include some kind of philosophical thinking.
He could have chosen many aspects of philosophy - metaphysics (what exists?) or morality (what is a good action?). Instead he chose epistemology (how do I 'know' something is true? how do I 'know' at all?).
Theory of knowledge is the course that he developed and it became part of the 'Core' or heart of the IB. We often think about 'thinking' and 'feeling', but there are many ways that we make sense of the world. Cultural and indigenous ways of knowing and experiencing the world play just as big a part in our lives, as scientific knowledge from induction and the scientific process, or abstract mathematical deduction from axioms. The arts make sense of the world aesthetically and metaphorically, leading to the famous quote from the dancer Isadora Duncan when asked if she could explain her dance saying 'if I could say it in words, I wouldn't need to dance'.
Cut to 50 years later and that French matriculation requirement means a theatre full of passionate, wide eyed grade 11 students explaining everything from Basque road crossing signs, to Javanese Batik patterns to the early skate videos of Rodney Mullen. In each case explaining how the objects reveal and changed the way we know the world, or a small bit of it.
What struck me most about this year's TOK Exhibition was the freedom and fluency of thought. Give a person fish and they'll eat for a day. Teach them to fish and they'll eat for a lifetime. Teach a person 'a thought' to memorise in a traditional national curriculum and they'll think for a day. Teach them how to think and they'll think for a lifetime. Merci à la France d'insister sur la philosophie!
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