ROAD MAP

Hi everyone,

I think it might be useful at this point if I gave you a "map" of where we are and where we intend to go.

We have looked at four Areas of Knowledge (the Natural Sciences, the Human Sciences, History and Mathematics) and tried to make some comparisons and points of contact between them. We have also, I hope, been thinking about how we employ the various Ways of Knowing in these disciplines. All the time, we are identifying knowledge issues and trying to respond to them.

Next week, you will be getting your 800-word assignment back with comments. We will give you an opportunity to judge what you think your work is worth, and then we will tell you what we think. We will also look at a couple of essays written by students elsewhere and have a go at marking them - I think this will be a very useful exercise for you in coming to understand what a good essay might look like. You will also get some titles to choose from for your next assignment, which will be a full-length essay of 1,600 words - we will give you the Easter vacation and the time immediately afterwards to write this and the deadline will be 28th April.

In the remaining time before the semester examinations, we will be using our lessons to take a close look at the Arts as an Area of Knowledge. We will still need to look at Ethics, but that will probably be postponed until the very beginning of IB2. However, that does not stop you from finding out a bit about this very important area in advance.

We hope very much that this blog will help you in every aspect of your work in this course and beyond, and that includes essay writing. While the blog is probably not a good source for taking material verbatim (why not?), we hope it raises awareness of issues and examples that you might develop.

As we are concentrating hard on essay writing at the moment, there will be no new question of the week today. Instead, we should be focussing on extending the conversation on last week's question because it is designed to help you directly with the essay writing task. So keep the comments and contributions coming on that thread.

I hope this helps us to orient ourselves with respect to the journey. Have a restful but thoughtful weekend.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK - 27th MARCH 2009

This is first of all a reminder that your contributions to the blog will be taken into account when semester grades are awarded. I notice that only a minority of you have responded to last week’s question. Those who have responded have made some great points, so why not take the chance to join them by making your contribution now?

In the mean time, we need to post the next question of the week. This time we are going to take a slightly different approach – please read on carefully.

Here is a Theory of Knowledge essay title:

Compare the roles played by reason and imagination in at least two Areas of Knowledge.

The question is – how would you go about responding to this title?

You would have a word-limit of 1,600. What form would your essay take and why? What would each paragraph be about? What areas of knowledge would you consider and why? How many areas of knowledge should be included? How would you set up comparisons between reason and imagination? How would you explore what these two terms mean? What examples would help? What claims and counterclaims could be made? Let’s explore in a practical way how a title like this could be the springboard for an outstanding essay.

I think this could be a very useful discussion in the build-up to the full-length essays you will be writing very soon…

the eye and the mind...

i found this qoute a while ago "The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend" , do you think that it's true. If so then are we resricting our knowledge because we simply don't believe in the existence of something. Could we see fairies if we wanted to, what then isthe difference between a day dream and what actually is?