widehead comments on Theory of Knowledge (rationality outreach) - Less Wrong

60 Post author: KPier 09 August 2011 09:36PM

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Comment author: jimrandomh 08 August 2011 08:00:23PM 9 points [-]

At my school, we regularly have speakers come in and discuss various topics during ToK, mostly because the regular instructor doesn't have any idea what to say.

This sounds really easy to fix. Most instructors are used to having a curriculum handed to them in textbook form. A list of good articles (whether from Less Wrong or elsewhere) would fill that role. Read a post as homework, discuss in class, repeat. Throw in an occasional writing assignment for writing practice and grading. This would be dramatically more valuable than most high school classes, and easy to run.

Comment author: widehead 12 August 2011 02:18:53AM 1 point [-]

"Most instructors are used to having a curriculum handed to them in textbook form." What evidence do you have to back up this assertion? This is most definitely not my (or my colleagues) experience over the last 15 years.

Limiting a ToK class to one source would be utterly disastrous and totally against the entire aims of the programme.

Comment author: jimrandomh 12 August 2011 02:30:04AM 1 point [-]

I didn't mean to suggest that limiting a course to one source is a good idea or commonly practiced. Rather, what I meant was that a course needs at least one good source of relevant material that won't run out, as a base to which other things are added. In my experience, almost all courses have something like that, and instructors supplement the main textbook to varying degrees.