The Arts in TOK

The Arts have always been my favourite subject to participate in school and its relation to Theory of Knowledge can be quite interesting. The beauty of art is its flexibility. The arts allows an artist to emotion, sense perception, intuition,  language or reason to express knowledge. Depending on the message wanting to be expressed, each way of knowledge can be used to their advantage. Emotion can be used in an artwork to reveal a personal feeling towards a topic while reason can be communicated similarly. Sense perception can be conveyed through dimension in two-dimensional images yet this can also be expressed in sculpture and its use of negative and positive space. Although language may not seem like an obvious  way of knowing in the Arts, understanding language and culture visually can be rather important to the message of an image. More obvious artworks can be associated with intuition as they require less research to understand the overall message of the artwork. 

An important question to associate with Theory of Knowledge is: In what way does our culture and upbringing affect our view of the world? 

This is an idea that we have been exploring in our Standard Level Language and Literature course. Our context's definitely affect on our perception of the world in many ways. Personally, the way my parents have taught me to treat others varies from perhaps someone from another culture. For example, tipping a waiter at a restaurant is something normal in our culture, however I have met other individuals from a different culture who don't believe tipping is as important. This value changes from a culture to another. Open-mindedness has also been a crucial part of my upbringing and to also aware of cultures around the world. Studying at an International School has allowed me to live around other cultures and learn new things about them. Most kids at an International School develop an "international accent" seeing as they are surrounded by a variety of cultures and therefore, accents as well. I have somewhat adapted this accent however when I travel back home to Canada during the holidays, my accent adapts to the one of my extended family and friends. I feel as though open-mindedness and awareness of cultures is a key aspect of viewing the world in a positive way, compared to those who know little beyond their own culture. This awareness can also lead to finding ones identity in a cultural context.