We make in our world many things, not the least of which is a custom narrative that we have the truest sense of it--that we know the world as it really is, and that our facts are most certain, and our truths most true. Is this so, and how might we test the veracity of such claims? If you've gotten this far, you might think this post is heading down the proverbial rabbit hole, the kind where toga clad philosophers hang out and impress each other with fancy abstractions and obscure words. No thank you. Rather, we are inundated everyday with all kinds of knowledge claims, about our health, our finances, parenting, the best candidate in the next major election, existential threats, what we should or shouldn't do, why my favorite band is better than yours--all the really important stuff. We have to sort it all out for ourselves, make sense of our world, and it takes some preparation and practice to get our reasoning humming on all cylinders.
Most of us learn our critical thinking not in our school years, but in adulthood, when we have no choice but to get good at it, and usually only after a number of poorly executed decisions that go sideways. Critical thinking is hard. Doubly so if you live in two or more languages. For example, consider the eminent Mr. Keats above. What might he mean by "airy citadel"? Well, if you took a British Literature class back in the day, you might be able to tell us much about his intention, his masterful use of language, even provide us a context and avenue for thinking about Mr. Keat's thinking. However, if you are like most of us, and you couldn't pick Keats out of a line up if you tried, you might instead rely on your ability to decode, to reason or intuit, to analyze and evaluate for meaning.
Your children are now practicing critical thinking with regularity. It's the point behind all of those Central Ideas and Statements of Inquiry. The Primary Years and Middle Years Programs challenge students early and often to think deeply, and to self-assess their own thinking for improvement. In the Diploma Program (grades 11-12), critical thinking is ratcheted up significantly. Yes, the subject areas get college-level tough, which should be a given in a great prep school. I refer here to the Theory of Knowledge, a core requirement in the DP.
The Theory of Knowledge (TOK) is designed to challenge students to interrogate the ways by and through which they “know” their world. What can be known and how might it be known to us? What are the strengths and shortcomings of socially and culturally constructed methodologies for knowledge acquisition and verification? How does one personally construct knowledge and make meaning? What roles do assumption and bias have in knowing? How might the language(s) and other symbolic forms we use to communicate our knowing complicate or undermine the same?
TOK takes on some big ideas, like Ways of Knowing (WOKs), or how we gain personal knowledge and construct shared knowledge through language, sense perception, emotion, reason, imagination, faith, intuition, and memory. We challenge the Areas of Knowledge (AOKs), our categories and disciplines of shared knowledge, including mathematics, natural sciences, human sciences, the arts, history, ethics, and religious and indigenous knowledge systems. We carefully consider Knowledge Claims--assertions about some aspect of the world (first order), or about how knowledge itself is constructed and evaluated (second order). We explore Knowledge Concepts: evidence, justification, limits and uncertainties, perspective and bias, validity, reliability, correlation and causality, authority and credibility, objectivity and subjectivity, absolutism and relativism, paradigms and worldviews. Finally, we learn to formulate Knowledge Questions--explorations of the acquisition, production, verification, and evaluation of knowledge in real life situations and in a variety of Areas of Knowledge. For example, in a major election year, carefully considering electoral coverage, how might bias in media be unavoidable? Fundamentally, we wish to develop discerning thinkers who carefully consider all forms of information and persuasive argumentation as they make decisions in the real world.
If you want to know more about TOK or any aspect of the IB Diploma Program, contact Laura Maristany, our Diploma Program Coordinator. You can also contact the MUS principal or me. Over the next number of weeks, I will devote many Headlines to breaking down the core requirements of the Diploma Program.
See you around campus.