Theory of Knowledge
To help empower IB students to approach the world with the confidence that they can figure things out, the International Baccalaureate Organization developed a course that analyzes “how we know the world” and organizes “what we know about the world”.
In summary, knowledge is gained in eight ways:
...and knowledge is organized into eight basic categories:
The Theory of Knowledge course is an in-depth exploration of those 16 topics and most importantly, their relationship with each other. At Stanton, it consists of a 3 semester course, one year in 11th grade and wrapping up with the first half of 12th grade. The students draft their Extended Essays primarily during the second half of 11th grade and do both the ToK oral presentation and write their essays in 12th grade.
In summary, knowledge is gained in eight ways:
- Through sense perception
- Through emotion
- Through language
- Through reason/logic
- Through intuition
- Through imagination
- Through faith
- Through memory
...and knowledge is organized into eight basic categories:
- Mathematical - what is internally consistent
- Natural scientific - what surrounds human beings and composes them physically
- Human scientific - what describes human beings and affects them psychologically
- Historical - what has happened in the past
- Religious - what transcends other knowledge
- Artistic - what is beautiful
- Ethical - what (we believe) humans should do
- Indigenous - what ‘our’ people have always known
The Theory of Knowledge course is an in-depth exploration of those 16 topics and most importantly, their relationship with each other. At Stanton, it consists of a 3 semester course, one year in 11th grade and wrapping up with the first half of 12th grade. The students draft their Extended Essays primarily during the second half of 11th grade and do both the ToK oral presentation and write their essays in 12th grade.
ToK Assessment
Obviously, this is not something that lends itself to a multiple choice exam. There are two IB assessment components for the course:
- An oral presentation on a real-life situation that presents complex knowledge questions, e.g., the extent to which a government's reports can be trusted based on what we *know* about North Korea.
- An essay on one of eight prompts, called "prescribed titles," that are newly-released each September with a December essay-response due date. Students have four months to draft their response. An example of one of the prescribed titles from 2014 is, "'The historian's task is to understand the past; the human scientist, by contrast, is looking to change the future.' To what extent is this true in these areas of knowledge?" Students will draft their responses to one prompt with supervision from their TOK instructor.