BLOGGING FROM BLAVA--PAST NA OKO

-an exile writes from BLAVA--WHERE POST-sOCIALIST REALITY BLENDS WITH THE CRUELTY OF aMERICAN CAPITALISM TO PRODUCE A GREETING WITH ALL THE SUBTLETY OF A SLAP ....

Friday, June 09, 2006

The Unnaturalness of IBO TOK essay questions

The questions have a standard format
Embed a standard philosophical question within the structure provided by the educational company.

It is not enough for a student to be asked about, e.g., whether people are basically selfish. (Why is that not enough?) But the question has to be embedded in a way that generates complexity, as in,

"Do questions like 'why be moral?' or 'Why shouldn't I be selfish?' have defnitive
answers as do some questions in other Areas of Knowledge?" Does having a
definite answer make a question more or less important?"

In a 1250 word essay, this is a lot. The student has to basically stake out the idea that questions about selfishness are "not definite", and then argue that they are still valuable.

The pragmatics of the question suggest that the selfishness question is "not definite".

But, I seriously doubt whether that category is the right one to apply here. Granted there's a difference between math and ethics, is ethics usually characterized as "indefinite"?

This problem comes from a sort of dogmatism, insisting that everythng fit into a certain format.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home