As International Water Day 2011 arrives, I look forward to seeing what all my blog colleagues write. On a topic for which there is far, far too much to say, what will they pick out? In this blog, I’ve already treated International Water Day in my last two postings, indirectly – by avoiding the issue of water specifically and staying, as TOK does, on the level of general thinking skills and overall approaches to any issue. It is exactly by doing so that TOK contributes most to understanding global issues: by supporting and strengthening the analytical skills that are taught also in other subjects, and by developing student awareness of how different areas of knowledge work to contribute to our overall understanding. However, TOK does move much closer to the subject matter of a global issue in two other main ways.
For one thing, critical skills cannot be developed in a void. The framework for identifying and analyzing perspectives that I suggested in my last blog posting is not of any value unless it is used to guide exploration of a specific topic. It is meant to be applied. It would be useful in preparing the TOK presentation or in other thinking through the course, and also useful if TOK were to team up with other subjects within a school to treat a particular global issue.
