More IB TOK Madness

Continuing to assess my students' performance, I have also (inadvertently) been assessing the "International Baccalaureate Organization's" choice of essay topics....

Consider the following: "If education means learning to see through the cliches of one's time....."

My problem with this question is whether a 17 or 18 year-old student is capable of understanding the idea that people live according to cliches... let alone seeing what cliches motivate people today. (And I suspect this probably works at a generation or country or profession level.)

It seems to entail a sort of intellectual maturity that my students don't possess--something that comes from acquiring a certain distance and perspective.

My students themselves seem to be living desperately in the grips of various cliches--starting with the vulgar materialism which comes with free market fundamentalism in post-Socialist countries. (I'm getting sick of reading that we're all motivated by money.... with most of the alleged or presumed implications of that remark operating offstage--offstage both of the students explicit thoughts, and offstage of the particular piece of writing in which it occurs...)

A colleague has suggested that this question looks like something the question's author would have liked to write about..... There may be something to that....