What can paperclips tell us about the May 2025 ToK Essay titles ?
Yesterday I had the privilege of running a session unpacking the May 25 ToK Essay titles hosted by Toddle (a video of the session will appear at this link shortly), many thanks to all of those who attended.
From the session I learned that many colleagues are interested in practical suggestions as to how to unpack the ToK Essay, and how to support students as they prepare to write their essay.
I believe that in the period preceding the writing of the essay the concepts and themes relating to the essay should be explored. I'd go as far as to say that they should "taught", but this doesn't mean that I stand at the front and lecture !
What should be “taught” to students to prepare them for the essay ?
The first question is what should be taught ? Well, at this early stage I'm focusing on teaching the themes that are common to a number of the titles. In the May 25 Session the utility of knowledge is common to all the prescribed titles.
The utility of knowledge (USE of knowledge) covers a range of issues including the various ways in which knowledge is used, (these are essentially teleological issues).
This gives rise to many issues and questions including:
Are the use and purpose of knowledge necessarily the same thing ?
Whether knowledge is used for the purpose for which it was produced?
Whether knowledge is produced for a purpose?
Who defines the purpose of knowledge ? (producer or user?)
How can we measure the usefulness of knowledge ?
Does the use of knowledge cause its production ?
Every essay title in this session can be linked to the use (or purpose?) of knowledge. I wouldn't link these use issues to the PTs at this stage, but I will include them here for clarification for teachers:
PT1: Whether they have that ethical obligation could depend upon what you (or they) think the purpose of knowledge is (in their specific AoK).
PT2: Whether our most revered knowledge is more fragile than we assume may depend on how knowledge is used (or whether it is used at all) .
PT3: One of the ways of reconciling the drive with the finite resources is changing how we use knowledge.
PT4: Whether those improving tools result in improved knowledge depends on how we use that knowledge .
PT5: If the models are wrong but useful depends on how we use the models.
PT6: If acquiring knowledge does destroy the sense of wonder depends on how we use both the sense of wonder and the acquired knowledge.
Obviously, this is only one of many interpretations available for these questions. Obviously, there are many other 'unifying' themes for these titles, but this could be a useful starting point for these essays.
So what am I doing in the third week of September in my DP2 class ?
I'm looking at those themes that are common across the essay titles. I'm asking students to explore this in a non-Tok context, and then gradually moving it to a Tok context. I'm not looking at the questions yet, we're just building the framework of conceptual understanding so that when students do come to the questions they concepts and themes are familiar.
“What activities are you using to teach the common theme "use of knowledge" ?”
I start with the (wonderful) paperclip exercise (linked here). This is fun, competitive, active and insightful - it ticks all of my ToK Learning activity aims. Obviously, the important part of the activity is the follow up discussion, in which I ask students to think of the paperclip as knowledge, and then to list what we learn about the uses of knowledge from this activity. I expect them to come up with many of the issues listed earlier in this blog.
Now we start to move this into a more ToK specific set of questions. In a class of 15- 20 students I will split them into groups of 3-4 students, and give each group a case study and a knowledge question. They have to use the case study to give a brief presentation on the knowledge question. They have (very) limited time to achieve this (30 mins maybe).
Grp 1 -Alfred Nobel - The discovery of dynamite. Is knowledge always used for the purpose intended by the knowledge producer ?
Grp 2 - Surrealist Art - Does all knowledge have a purpose / use ?
Grp 3 - Mosquitoes (or anything else that they won't value) - Is the value of knowledge related to its usefulness ?
Grp 4 -The discovery of penicillin - Does the use of knowledge cause its production ?
Grp 5 - Schrodinger’s Cat - Does all knowledge have to have a use ?
Grp 6 - The history of the internet - Does how we use knowledge define knowledge ?
The aim is not to get definitive answers to the knowledge questions, nor to fully understand the short case studies. The aim is for the students to start to develop a range of critical perspectives on the use of knowledge.
Resources !
There are many other resources to Tok Today to support teachers supporting students writing the ToK Essay, including
Free Resources
Paid Resources
ToK Essay Teacher Support Pack
ToK Essay Student Guidance Notes
If you want more tailored support from me please don't hesitate to get in touch, I have worked with schools in 12 countries in the past year alone. I'd love to hear from you !
Stay TokTastic,
Daniel, Lisbon Sept 24.
