What do you think of TOK?

[Clause]

The class, of course

Sorta curious about what you lot have to say about it.

Perhaps you'd like to share your expectations, assuming you haven't started in the DP. Or, assuming you're out, maybe you'd like to share with us some past experience. In any case, I'd love to hear your opinions.

Edited January 25, 2014 by Clause

[twilight]

I absolutely dislike TOK, period. I don't even have anything to say about it.

[flinquinnster]

I absolutely dislike TOK, period. I don't even have anything to say about it.

I disliked TOK too, though I will briefly say why. Mostly, I hated all the pretentious jargon and fancy diagrams. Though I have to say that as much as I disliked TOK in an intellectual sense (despite what I think are its laudable aims), I quite liked the class itself. They were rather relaxing and a fantastic time to generally catch up on email, miscellaneous homework, reading etc.

[twilight]

Yes that's exactly it, the pretentious jargon. I dislike all the AOK, WOK, KI, RLS and stuff that they make us include in our presentation and essay. I used to see it as restricting my thoughts, which is exactly the opposite of what the TOK course hopes to achieve, and I resented it so much. As I started doing my presentation and essay though, I decided to change my attitude and saw it as framework to guide my thoughts, though in the end, I never spammed my essay with TOK jargons; I barely used them actually.

I think I disliked my TOK class as well. My TOK classes in my first year were a complete waste of time. My teacher taught the WOK, AOK and stuff, and I wrote down notes, but I did not even refer back to my notes in the end. In my second year, my TOK classes consisted a lot of discussions. I liked the idea, but I disliked the fact that my teacher made us speak one after another instead of allowing free debate. Of course some order is necessary so I saw where he was coming from, but well that's not to my liking.

[sameera95]

Honestly, ToK hurts my head. I can't say it hasn't helped me at all, because I feel it has. But questioning the meaning and relevance of anything and everything just makes my head hurt

[Fzierah]

i absolutely dislike TOK at first . and now i'm in the second half and falling in love with TOK as i find it's really great . It leads us to be a critical thinker . btw im not saying its an easy subject

[Guest Viska]

TOK is the most annoying thing in the world. However, I knew beforehand that you should look at the sources critically and see the strengths and limitations. I do not like listening what the other philosophers said. I want more down to earth discussions instead of what philospohers are saying.

[skandalism]

After having finished my ToK course (nothing beats the feeling) I'm kind of torn. Everything we did the first year was rather useless for the presentation and the essay but I still enjoyed it and the presentation was loads of fun. Disliked the essay and the questions we could choose from this year though. I think that if you have good and experienced teachers you'll enjoy it.

[Behaa]

TOK is one of those subjects where you just sit back, and let the info go into one ear and come out the other. Then ace the exam by writing some bs

[roxkra]

So far, we just discuss random topics and watch Ted Talks in my ToK class. We debate, but the people in my class are so loud and assertive, I can't get a word in edge wise.

[Sandwich]

In a sentence: A broadly pointless use of time I could have spent napping or doing actual work, culminating in a bizarre grading system and controversially given the same weighting as the EE I spent hours slaving over.

On the plus side at least it gives you bonus points. Whooo!

[sameera95]

I can't wait until our essays are done! We'll just have a free period instead

[by.andrew]

I had an awesome teacher for ToK, so I found ToK to be an enjoyable experience. The grading on the presentation and the essay, however, are ridiculous and do not reflect the students' true knowledge in epistemology/philosophy in my opinion. Sure, most of ToK can be considered as a waste of time, but I found the content to be quite interesting and informative. This course actually gave me the feeling that I was taking a liberal-artsy type education. French B on the other hand... Now that's a useless course to take!

[Venusaur]

In my first year of TOK I had the lamest tok teacher ever. He barely explained Woks and most of the time we'd just do classroom debates that barely helped us. It was so bad that when we did practice IAs, he gave me an A for just reporting and not looking at any Knowledge issues, etc at all. The second year was a little better, but it was my teacher's first year ever teaching tok so he didnt really know what to do at times.

Basically, the class was interesting, but getting bad teachers made me dislike it.

[-._._.-]

Yes that's exactly it, the pretentious jargon. I dislike all the AOK, WOK, KI, RLS and stuff that they make us include in our presentation and essay. I used to see it as restricting my thoughts, which is exactly the opposite of what the TOK course hopes to achieve, and I resented it so much. As I started doing my presentation and essay though, I decided to change my attitude and saw it as framework to guide my thoughts, though in the end, I never spammed my essay with TOK jargons; I barely used them actually.

I think I disliked my TOK class as well. My TOK classes in my first year were a complete waste of time. My teacher taught the WOK, AOK and stuff, and I wrote down notes, but I did not even refer back to my notes in the end. In my second year, my TOK classes consisted a lot of discussions. I liked the idea, but I disliked the fact that my teacher made us speak one after another instead of allowing free debate. Of course some order is necessary so I saw where he was coming from, but well that's not to my liking.

It is precisely the pretentious jargon that I like. It makes me feel smart knowing all the fallacies and stuff like that. Having said that, I feel like I'm just trying to find these kind of stuff and instead of like thinking critically? Wait, does that make sense?

Edited February 14, 2014 by -._._.-

[mepilokisazt]

Many students (and teachers) at my school consider IB something of a joke. The AP kids definitely look down on us for being stupid enough to do so much pointless work.

The IB teachers had a meeting recently in which they discussed schoolwide perception of the IB program, and the only one not under scrutiny was my TOK teacher. Although the non IB teachers hate IB, they love TOK, and wish there was an AP version. Several of my friends on Facebook have posted that TOK is the only good part of IB. Personally I like TOK, but I like IB in general. Sometimes I embarrass myself in that class because it's completely discussion based and I was not an avid participant in such things until this year. I really like TOK because it allows me to think about myself, instead of school. It has a relaxing effect

Edited February 21, 2014 by mepilokisazt

[Sarah1]

Personally I hate TOK, but that's probably just my experience with the class. We had this pre-IB class that was really cool, Creative and Critical Thinking, which is what I thought TOK was going to be like. It's not. At all. Despite the fact that it has the same teacher, he's not near as interesting and, to be honest, I'm quickly tiring of everyone in there. To make it all worse, he said that even though we're wrapping up our essays now, we'll still have to come in there and do work because supposedly the state requires us to, even though none of the past TOK classes have had to do this.

It's just a waste of time for me, I haven't learned anything, we don't get into any good debates or discussions, we just sit there and try our best not to fall asleep. I would prefer another study hall, I would enjoy it much more.

[farmerjoe]

I really love the idea of TOK, the idea of questioning the things we learn and how reliable the things we learn really are.

But I absolutely hate the implementation. My teacher is terrible, blessed with the gift of talking a lot without actually every saying anything. He rambles on on huge tangents, stopping periodically to say "what was the question again?". We don't think about anything interesting, he just keeps saying "our daily lives are based on assumptions" and won't accept me pointing out that we have to accept some things in order to have more interesting and deeper discussions.

It's a waste of my time.

[Utah IB Student]

I absolutely loved TOK. I finished the course just this last semester, and I would take it again if I had room in my schedule. My teacher was wonderful, and my classmates perfected it. I think that to have a good TOK class, you need to have a group of students that will participate in discussions and debate with each other. In my class, we had a few people on opposite sides of issues with everyone else in the middle, but we would all argue our side. I found the philosophy and the questions fascinating, and I really learned a lot in the class. At my school, not that many people do the full IB Program, so we're all friends, and we get on rather well. I think that the environment I was in really helped make TOK better. If you like questioning things, then I think you'll like the class. If you just like a set of guidelines that put things in black and white, then I don't think you'll like the class.

[ilovepotato]

I'm probably the odd one out here thinking it's a stressful class. Our school crammed the TOK class into one year, and we happened to get an inexperienced teacher this year who actually did not know he was teaching the class until 2 weeks before school started. I found it stressful because we hadn't gone over the AOKs when we started our essays, and we were pretty much left to figure the whole thing out on our own. We are still not completely done with our essays and I feel awfully stressed about mine because I don't know what grade it currently deserves and I'm clueless as to how to improve it. I think having TOK share the same grading scale with the EE is ridiculous because the EE was actually a product of months of my tears and blood... I'd be really mad if my TOK completely devalues my EE.

Not to mention that we have only just started the TOK presentation process and because of a misinterpretation of the due date, we are cramming it.

I just feel really stressed!

The course itself is... meh, uninteresting to me. I don't think I really learned anything new, probably because of my class. It does encourage me to view the world in a more secular manner though.

Edited February 23, 2014 by ilovepotato