As a core subject in IBDP, TOK plays an extremely significant part in our education process and knowledge acquisition. TOK stands for the Theory of Knowledge, and in this class, we learn all about acquiring knowledge around us. We ask questions such as, “How do we know what we know?”, “Does the acquisition of knowledge differ from one area of knowledge to another,” and “What is considered knowledge, and what are the factors that determine this?” It is a class where we, as IBDP students, not only use our critical thinking skills to discuss these questions but also add our own insights to them. In addition to the extremely eye-opening discussions that take place in our TOK class, we answer knowledge questions through real-life examples, also known as real world objects. As part of our internal assessment in TOK, we had to sit for a TOK exhibition where we choose an IA prompt, a knowledge question from a list of very interesting questions, and then we take three objects of our choice and discuss the question we have chosen through this object.
We write a commentary that consists of three paragraphs, tackling all the different parts of our chosen question; each paragraph talks about one of the objects we chose. After this, we display our objects along with our questions where we can share our ideas to the audience. This year’s exhibition was the first ever to be hosted at Houssam Eddine Hariri High school, and it is absolutely worth saying that it was a complete success because we, as IBDP students, enjoyed displaying our work to the audience that consisted of parents, teachers, other IB students, and potential IB students, who had an incredible time passing by everyone’s station. Our audience was extremely interested and impressed by our presentations because they saw passion in each and every one of us.
They would ask us all kinds of interesting questions that relate to our objects, and we were so excited to answer them and defend our claims. Add to this, the variety of objects at this year’s TOK exhibition was outstanding. Some students used objects like, cookies, their biology book, the irrational number Pi, Ted Bundy, Kim Kardashian, Newton’s laws of motion, and many more creative objects. This entire experience was entertaining and beneficial not only for our respected audience, but also for us since everyone deeply learned from the classmates’ objects and the approaches they chose to take. It was an enriching learning experience for all ends, and that was probably my favorite part about the entire event.
As an IBDP 2 student, I, Sahar Fadda, believe that TOK is a core subject for various reasons because of such activities and projects that enable us to implement what we learned in our TOK class in real world scenarios and objects. TOK teaches us to see how knowledge is used and acquired in so many different subjects. It also helps us experience and assess knowledge around us. We can also pass on the knowledge we acquire to others and expose them to new perspectives similar to the ones I have explained before. Besides, one of the main parts of knowledge framework in TOK is perspective that can differ from one person to another! Our exhibition allowed us to share our own perspective on certain ideas and also listen to new ones along the way.
Sahar Fadda~ IBDP 2 student
