Response to Issues of Knowledge in English from ToK for Teachers

This post is in response to the ToK for Teachers homework that asked “What knowledge issues do academics and students in your content area face when attempting to acquire knowledge and/or find truth? What are the implications? Some of the knowledge issues that students and teachers face in English is holding on too dearly to their beliefs without due consideration of alternate, contrasting, or different beliefs. There is a sense of egoacademics that oftentimes runs through the brightest of students and teachers. Overcoming one’s ego is one of the central issues for acquiring new knowledge; indeed, it is central to most things in life. Specifically, students in English often come to it with an empirical sense, and as a result, seek to find THE answer in a text. This is a narrow approach to acquiring knowledge in English. Instead, I hope that they think of acquiring knowledge as that which is based on their own abilities to think critically and analyze text, thereby creating meaning or knowledge for themselves, as opposed to discovering it in the text. Oftentimes, this aspect is met with resistance and viewed as BS-ing through English. Academics also have issues with acquiring knowledge in English, ironically, in a similar way as students. Academics oftentimes limit their scope of context. For example, one can have multiple interpretations of a text if different critical lenses are applied. Issues arise when academics fail to see the validity or consider those differing critical lenses, which might be counter to the one held by the academic. Again, this is ego driven.