Knowledgeable
We explore concepts, ideas and issues that have local and global significance. In so doing, we acquire in-depth knowledge and develop understanding across a broad and balanced range of disciplines.
Thinkers
We exercise initiative in applying thinking skills critically and creatively to recognize and approach complex problems, and make reasoned, ethical decisions.
New information comes at us at a relentless pace. The BBC reported that the average inhabitant of a Western city is exposed to the same amount of data in one day as a person in the 15th century was in their lifetime*. The challenge for our children is how to process, categorize, and choose to assimilate (or not) this potentially new knowledge.
Teachers at Futuro Verde help students question what they already know, decide what they would like to know, and assist them in integrating that new information. Critical thinking skills are vital as students compare and contrast different information they find, evaluate it for bias and ultimately decide, consciously or subconsciously, whether or not this new knowledge will be retained.
Lural Ramírez, Director, recently attended an IB workshop in Theory of knowledge (TOK). As she starts to share from her experiences at this training, all staff and students are being encouraged to reflect on how we know what we claim to know. This comes through analyzing: the distinction between shared knowledge and personal knowledge; our ways of knowing (emotion, reason, imagination, faith, intuition, memory, language, and sense perception); and our areas of knowledge (mathematics, natural sciences, human sciences, the arts, history, ethics, religious knowledge systems, and indigenous knowledge systems).
To support their students, parents and guardians might also take the opportunity to reflect when stating with conviction what they think they know. Model and share with your children how you believe you came to know something, and be open and honest about how your memory, emotion, faith etc. might have influenced that process.
*Vince, Gaia. “Cities: How Crowded Life Is Changing Us.” BBC. BBC, 17 May 2013. Web. 24 Mar. 2016. <http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130516-how-city-life-is-changing-us>.
Dunn, Michael. “Critical thinking and the IB Diploma.” 14th October 2014. Last accessed: 24th March 2016. <http://www.theoryofknowledge.net/about/the-tok-course/critical-thinking-ib-diploma/>