TOK shouldn’t exclude upperclassmen
My freshman year, I started becoming interested in philosophy and how our minds worked. Asking such simple questions about life that we never seem to think of genuinely intrigued me. This made me want to start taking classes, and sooner or later I found myself watching TOK classes off of youtube. This became the highlight of my day, and when I found out there was a TOK class at NPHS I was beyond myself excited.
TOK, Theory of Knowledge, is a class about the different angles of knowledge. They go through the process of asking questions to determine what we actually know and how to see it through different lenses. Just this year, I found out that TOK is not only restricted to juniors, but also only allowed for full-IB students. This was disheartening to hear as I have been waiting my entire highschool career to be able to take this class.
Through my process of reading through the TOK book, sitting in on the class discussions and talking with multiple TOK students, I was fascinated although disappointed that I could not take this class. I am a student who holds a weighted GPA of 4.0 and 5 out of my 7 classes are IB or advanced. I finished 3 years of Spanish and 2 years of ASL by my sophomore year. While this, in my opinion, is impressive for how much I have had to juggle without side life, it is not enough to get into the program. I cannot take full-IB due to my schedule and the weight it would bear on my mental health.
TOK is a required class for full-IB students, but it could be so much more. By opening up this class to upperclassmen and picking out the students who really want to learn, it could be an incredibly useful course. People who are particularly interested in pursuing philosophy shouldn’t be excluded from taking this class just because they don’t have the time for full-IB.
To make this work, the class should be an elective. There should be an application process or survey in place in order to be accepted into the class. The form would consist of asking the following questions; Name and grade, current and prior GPA, are you full IB or non full IB, do you take any IB classes and if so what classes, why do you want to take this class and how will it benefit you in the future?
This class could give students the opportunity to think from different perspectives instead of seeing life in black and white. By giving students this opportunity, it could change the environment around our school and in our community.
