Tok Cultural Perspective

After hearing on TOK from ex-IBers, it had stamped into my head that TOK is nothing but a bore! And I should say that the first day I entered class, I had that permanently glued in my head.

I was stuck on the fact that I will never get anything said in class and barely paid any attention that day.

Moving on to the next class, again, I had absolutely no intention of listening, until something caught my attention.

‘What is perspectives?’

I clearly remember Mrs. Faith asking us to jot down the various perspectives in our notebooks. For me, that was a drag, but I had to do it, and so the TOK story starts…

Cultural Perspectives: I began reading the textbook engrossing myself by every second. Different cultures always caught my eye and suddenly learning about that in school had me even more excited for the upcoming TOK lessons.

‘Culture is the fabric of meaning in terms of which human beings interpret their experience and guide their action’

- Anthropologist Clifford Geertz.

I found out that everyone has a different beliefs and cultures, one can be of the same family, same religion however their culture can be different.

An example is of the religion Islam. It is the culture of

Connecting it to the IB learner’s profile, our bible, TOK encompasses open-mindedness, knowledgeable and makes us thinkers in one go. Because the world is incredibly vast, TOK teaches us how to listen, understand, ask and empathise. I learnt that different perspectives opens alternate ways of seeing things, giving us fresh ideas for problem solving, new knowledge and a much broader understanding and that no one is wrong; we are all right in our ways of thinking. I began to understand how TOK is like a key that will open up many doors of deeper thought and understanding for me and build my mindset in a very open-minded