One of my great joys about being back at school for the new school year is teaching my Theory of Knowledge (ToK) class.  I have a new group of Grade 11 students for ToK this year, and they are simply fabulous (well, they have been great so far anyway!).  Being with them in class twice each week means I can relax in the knowledge that I will have a minimum of at least two enjoyable highlights in my schedule each week.

For those who don’t know, ToK is a compulsory part of the IB Diploma program.  It is something like the ‘glue’ that binds together the whole IB curriculum, because it looks at the various ways we can know things and the different areas of knowledge, as well as providing a framework for these insights to come together as a coherent entity.  The course looks at areas such as truth, ethics, certainty, reliability, emotions, perception, reasoning, language, metaphysics, and lots more.

I love it!

When I was with my (now grown up) children in Australia in July, I realized just how many of our family’s social conversations often mirror a ToK discussion.  No, we are not a geeky family, but we do enjoy a good debate among ourselves, and I am

delighted that my children have grown up in a family environment where none of us simply accepts things that are said to us unquestioningly.

But when I look at the world around me – outside the school – and I am sad to see a very different dynamic.  ‘Life’ does not seem to be mirroring the ‘learning’ and the quality of thinking that I am aspiring to promote in my ToK classes.

This is perhaps most evident in the national media ‘dialogue’ here in the US that is leading up to the Presidential election in November – note I have avoided the word ‘debate’, and even the word ‘dialogue’ may be a misnomer because it implies that each side might be listening to the other.  Unfortunately, the US has nothing like “Q&A”, the weekly program on Australian television where ordinary members of the public can ask questions directly to politicians and hold them accountable (http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/vodcast.htm).

I have never previously had the privilege of experiencing a US election first hand in close proximity.  Last year some colleagues here at Awty told me that I would be in for a perverse treat as the election campaign heated up in the latter half of 2012.  Yes,

perversity has been evident, but I have not often had the feeling yet that it has been a treat.

Naturally, I am not going to comment on the specifics of American party politics in this blog, or anywhere else for that matter.  It would not be appropriate for me to do so as I am just an amateur observer of the US political scene.  Furthermore, I don’t even have the right to vote in the US.  As an Australian living in Texas, I have the same status as everyone who lives in Washington DC – US taxation without US representation, as the license plates in the District of Colombia somewhat cheekily proclaim.

Rather than being policy or party-specific, my observation here refers simply to what I believe is the abysmal standard of debate so far in this election campaign.  Maybe my expectations are too high, and I should emphasize that I am not singling out America in this regard.  I don’t know what the standard of debate used to be like in the US, but the standard of political discussion in Australia (my home country) also seems to have reached new depths of mediocrity at the moment (which may account for the abysmally low approval ratings for the party leaders on both sides of politics there).  I can remember some brilliant rhetoric and witty debates in Australia’s recent past, as leaders like Whitlam, Menzies and Hawke were unapologetically eloquent in using reasoning, culture and factual data (yes!) to illustrate their points.

The decline in the quality of political discussion struck me forcibly in July when I visited Australia and watched today’s political leaders on television with embarrassment.   Moreover, my thoughts seemed to be validated when I read an excellent article in the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ by Barry Jones (a former television quiz champion and previous President of one of Australia’s major political parties).  He quoted British journalist Robert Fisk in labeling today’s political discussion as “the infantilization of debate”.

I believe he was right to do so, despite the implicit insult to infants.

Jones continued his article with a comment about the Australian situation, but it could equally apply here in the US.  He said: “Currently, we are by far the best educated cohort in our history – on paper, anyway – but it is not reflected in the quality of our political discourse.  We appear to be lacking in courage, judgment, capacity to analyze or even simple curiosity, except about immediate personal needs.”

Referring to some of the major current political issues in Australia, Jones continued: “Debates on such issues as climate change, population, taxation, refugees, mandatory detention and offshore processing, plain packaging of cigarettes, limitations on problem gambling and access to water have been deformed by both sides resorting to cherry-picking of evidence, denigration of opponents, mere sloganeering, leading to infantilization of democracy, treating citizens as if they were unable to grasp major issues.”

To which I can only add – Hear!  Hear!

Jones and others have noted, rightly I think, that there is a strong anti-intellectual flavor in public life, sometimes described as philistine (or, more commonly in Australian vernacular, as ‘bogan’), which leads to a reluctance to engage in complex or sophisticated argument and analysis of evidence.  In Australia, this is easily seen in the anti-science push in debates about vaccination,

fluoridation and global warming.  In the US, it is evidenced in a far wider wider range of polemical issues.

While always being reluctant to apportion blame, I have to say that in the US the media must take some responsibility.  Revolutionary changes in IT mean we now communicate very rapidly in ways that are shallow and non-reflective to an unprecedented degree (think Twitter).  Advocacy and analysis have largely dropped out of politics and have been replaced by marketing and sloganeering. However, it is certainly not entirely the media’s fault – politicians need to share the blame as they attempt to time their speeches and news releases to coincide with the media’s daily news cycles and as they strive to achieve effective five-second sound bites.

In the Australian context once again, Barry Jones believes that serious debate on ideological issues has virtually dropped out of politics to be replaced by a managerial approach.  He believes that the use of focus groups and obsessive reliance on polling, together with the very short news cycle, means that the idea of sustained, serious, courageous analysis on complex issues has become almost inconceivable.  He sums it up like this:

“For decades, politics has been reported as a subset of the entertainment industry, in which it is assumed that audiences look

for instant responses and suffer from short-term memory loss.  Politics is treated as a sporting contest, with its violence, personality clashes, tribalism and quick outcomes.  The besetting fault of much media reporting is trivialization, exaggerated stereotyping, playing off personalities, and a general ‘dumbing down’.  This encourages the view that there is no point in raising serious issues months or years before an election.  This has the effect of reinforcing the status quo, irrespective of which party is in power.”

He contrasts this with the situation in the US – as it used to be a century and a half ago:  “In 1860 in New York, Abraham Lincoln began his campaign for the presidency with a very complex speech about slavery.  All four New York newspapers published the full text, which was widely read and discussed.  In 1860, the technology was primitive but the ideas were profound and sophisticated.  In 2012, the technology is sophisticated but the ideas uttered in the presidential contest so far are, in the most part, embarrassing in their banality, ignorance and naivety, much of it fueled by rage or ignorance.”

I thought  this was a very perceptive viewpoint.  As an educator, as the Head of an international school that seeks to form young people into sensitive, compassionate, thinking, articulate, reflective human beings, this decline in the quality of national debate naturally worries me.  The focus on style over substance also concerns me.  It leads me to ask – is becoming an intelligent, well-informed, globally-minded person going to be increasingly irrelevant in a world that is becoming a simplistic

and superficial reflection of reality television?  Should I be changing the focus of teaching in my ToK class so that my students can focus on developing the skills of making do in an unthinking, automaton future?  (Please understand that these questions are really intended to be provocative ‘comments’ rather than genuine ‘enquiries’!).

We are still in the phase of introductory lessons in my ToK classes.  As part of  my lesson on Thursday morning, I gave my students a fairly extreme ‘moral dilemma’ exercise, requiring them to consider several ethical possibilities, to be able to justify what they believe to be reasonable and unreasonable, and to get them thinking about the consequences of actions.  The scenario was this: “You are an inmate in a concentration camp.  A sadistic guard is about to hang your sister who tried to escape and wants you to pull the chair from underneath her.  He says that if you don’t, he will not only kill your sister but some other innocent inmate as well.  You don’t have any doubt that he means what he says.  Your sister is looking into your eyes.  What do you do?”

Having thought about their likely actions, the students were asked to arrange themselves in a line, with “you feel 100% that you should pull the chair” at one end, and “you feel 100% that you should not pull the chair” at the other end.  The students were then required to discuss the basis of their thinking with those around them (such as their reasoning, emotions, sense perception and language), and rearrange themselves in the line according to the strength of their position.

The positions adopted by my students are not the important point here (although I should advise the sisters of the students in my ToK class that if they ever find themselves in a concentration camp with their siblings, it would be better not to try and escape if they are hoping their siblings will try to save them).  The important and very encouraging outcome (for me) was that my students were able to articulate their thinking with highly effective and articulate clarity, displaying an impressive ability for thinking critically and engaging in an authentic search for meaning and truth.  Their thought processes were pleasingly antithetical to the superficiality of today’s political discussions.

As their teacher, I was extremely impressed by the clarity of their thinking and the eloquence of their expression.

As a citizen, albeit a non-voting one in the US, I felt their idealism, their humanity, and their willingness to engage with difficult issues, were exemplary.

And as their Head of School, I felt that they epitomized the type of student that I hope Awty will continue to produce for many years.

In that context, I have high hopes, and indeed high expectations, for the students of all ages who in our care at Awty International School.  Society’s hope for a better future lies with each and every one of them.

On a totally different note, I was thrilled with the progress made on the construction of our new multi-storey parking garage this week.  How that the concrete driveways have been poured, I am hopeful that we can start using the ground level facilities, including the new carpool lanes and student “kiss-and-drop” areas as soon as the concrete has had the required one week to harden.  Together with the completion of some pedestrian pathways, this should mean we can start using the new dropoff zone from the first Tuesday in September (the day after the Labor Day holiday).  The photos below show some aspects of the impressive progress made this week.