I agree that emphasis on critical thinking and analytical skills should be an essential element of any programme but from my admittedly limited experience the IB approach does not go as far in this direction as one might desire. Caveats; 1) the IB ToK element is better than the nothing most curricula I am familiar with have and shows the good intentions of those setting up the course, so this is not a ‘it’s no good’ but a ‘could do better’ comment and 2) not having gone to a school which taught IB, my experience has been limited to the handful of students I have discussed this programme with or offered ad hoc tutoring to in connection to the ToK element.
From what I can see, though the actual process of what is taught in classrooms and how it is taught may differ, in terms of what students seem to be producing at the end of the course the ToK element amounts to little more than Epistemology 101 where rather than being, as you put it, about ‘how to think, not what to think’ it is instead about ‘what to think’, just at a meta- level; ‘what to think about thinking’. If you wish to stimulate critical thinking I’m inclined to think intensive classroom based discussion of comparative analysis of arguments and source handling is superior to teaching the difference between the a priori and the a posteriori, or raising the possibility of absolute scepticism. I say this with no prejudice against epistemology, as a philosophy postgraduate student some of my best friends are epistemologists, but if the question is ‘what would be the best way to structure a curriculum so as to raise a generation of genuinely critical thinkers’ I don’t believe the answer is teaching them about Plato’s myth of the cave or the disputes between empiricism and rationalism. Perhaps such basic distinctions require some coverage, if only to avoid obvious howlers such as failing to recognise the use/mention distinction or the like, but for real critical thought it would seem better if the curriculum was structured so as to emphasise critical thought in all subjects in the form of subject-specific problem based critical analysis.
I agree that emphasis on critical thinking and analytical skills should be an essential element of any programme but from my admittedly limited experience the IB approach does not go as far in this direction as one might desire. Caveats; 1) the IB ToK element is better than the nothing most curricula I am familiar with have and shows the good intentions of those setting up the course, so this is not a ‘it’s no good’ but a ‘could do better’ comment and 2) not having gone to a school which taught IB, my experience has been limited to the handful of students I have discussed this programme with or offered ad hoc tutoring to in connection to the ToK element.
From what I can see, though the actual process of what is taught in classrooms and how it is taught may differ, in terms of what students seem to be producing at the end of the course the ToK element amounts to little more than Epistemology 101 where rather than being, as you put it, about ‘how to think, not what to think’ it is instead about ‘what to think’, just at a meta- level; ‘what to think about thinking’. If you wish to stimulate critical thinking I’m inclined to think intensive classroom based discussion of comparative analysis of arguments and source handling is superior to teaching the difference between the a priori and the a posteriori, or raising the possibility of absolute scepticism. I say this with no prejudice against epistemology, as a philosophy postgraduate student some of my best friends are epistemologists, but if the question is ‘what would be the best way to structure a curriculum so as to raise a generation of genuinely critical thinkers’ I don’t believe the answer is teaching them about Plato’s myth of the cave or the disputes between empiricism and rationalism. Perhaps such basic distinctions require some coverage, if only to avoid obvious howlers such as failing to recognise the use/mention distinction or the like, but for real critical thought it would seem better if the curriculum was structured so as to emphasise critical thought in all subjects in the form of subject-specific problem based critical analysis.