Guest Post: Nathan Haines, Secondary Social Studies Teacher in the U.S. and East Africa

A few years ago, I was one of several teachers teaching the Theory of Knowledge (TOK) course at an International Baccalaureate (IB) school in Ethiopia. While reviewing the scores of our students that year, I was surprised by the poor result of a particular academically strong student; let’s call her Helen. Helen was Ethiopian and had joined the school on a merit-based scholarship. Upon reviewing her submission, I detected in Helen’s essay an effort to reconcile her religiously-infused Ethiopian culture and her personal faith with her four years of high school at a Western-oriented, secular school. This is exactly the kind of thinking the TOK course encourages. My hunch, however, was that Helen performed poorly, in part, because her TOK class failed to equip her to do that thinking well.

The International Baccalaureate TOK Course

IB curricular programs are common within international schools around the world. They are also growing within the US where there are now 1,924 IB schools. Since its inception, the IB has sought to instill the trait of international-mindedness by having students “(engage) with diverse beliefs, values and experiences, and (learn) to think and collaborate across cultures and disciplines…” TOK is one of the required courses of the IB’s high school program. Rather than the typical focus on the substantive structure of knowledge – the facts, concepts, principles, and theories of a discipline – the TOK course requires students to consider the syntactical structure of knowledge. In TOK, students are asked to compare the knowledge frameworks of different disciplines, including the scope, perspectives, methods, and tools of knowledge in a discipline. “Knowledge and Religion” is included in the TOK course as one of the optional themes that teachers can choose to explore with students. Though the IB doesn’t track data on the popularity of the different optional themes, based on my observation, TOK teachers address the “Knowledge and Religion” theme less often than the others.

Like the history of schooling in Western countries, many international schools, including those with IB programs, are rooted in the liberal tradition of education. Liberalism sought to bracket-off the private sphere from the public sphere. Politically, the traditional liberal ideal involved citizens who could reasonably and objectively debate matters of public interest free from the subjectivity of the private sphere. Because it considered religion to be a matter of private concern, there was essentially no place for religion in a liberal education. I think this partly explains why many international school educators feel uncomfortable discussing religion in the classroom and why teachers often opt-out of the theme of “Knowledge and Religion” in their TOK courses.

Religion as a Source of Knowledge in the World

While religion may, in fact, be part of the private sphere, it remains an important and widely-used way of understanding the world around us. According to the Pew Research Center, 76% of the world’s population affiliate with a specific religious tradition. Of the remaining 24%, many still hold spiritual beliefs, even if they don’t associate with a particular world religion. I lived and taught in Ethiopia for ten years, followed by four years in Rwanda. In both countries, religious non-affiliation is very rare. In fact, the percentage of religiously unaffiliated in Rwanda and Ethiopia is less than 1%.

Similarly low numbers exist across large parts of the Global South, which generally includes Africa, South America, the Middle East, and India. Given the relationship between religion, culture, and identity across much of the globe, it’s a shame that more TOK teachers aren’t taking the opportunity to engage students in discussions about the role of religious belief in shaping how people make sense of their world. This seems like a missed opportunity when it comes to developing international-mindedness, not to mention in equipping students like Helen to grapple with how religion might shape their personal knowledge.

Incorporating the “Knowledge and Religion” Theme in the TOK Course

One way to approach religion in the TOK classroom is to compare the religious knowledge framework with those of other subject areas. In addition to valuing the separation of the public and private spheres, the liberal education tradition has also tended to privilege the natural sciences — disciplines that value reason, objectivity, and observable evidence. For this reason, I encourage TOK teachers to begin with a comparison of the frameworks for religion and the natural sciences.

The natural sciences are interested in questions about the material world. Scientists pursue “what,” “how,” and certain types of “why” questions. Their inquiry is descriptive and predictive in nature, and their fields employ empirical methods that require observation, as well as the gathering, measuring, and analyzing of data about material phenomena.

In contrast, the religions of the world are interested in questions of ultimate reality, the nature of consciousness, morality, and aesthetics. These are “why” and “how ought” questions that are explanatory and prescriptive. At an explanatory level, religions ask questions about first causes (origins of being and existence) and final causes (purpose or telos). At a prescriptive level, religions pursue questions about right and wrong, how we ought to live, and the beauty and futures we seek to create. Religions push us to think of a reality beyond the material, beyond what is observable, and beyond what can be studied empirically.

There are those who posit science as the only source of knowledge about all of reality; there are those on the side of religion who do the same. In the TOK classroom, rather than getting trapped in a debate about knowledge superiority, it’s more productive to approach both science and religion as different sources of human knowledge. They each pursue different questions about different aspects of human reality using different methods.

Religion and Making Sense of Our World

The TOK course also encourages critical thinking, and we must do that with discussions about religion as well. The TOK teacher must allow for the validity of religious knowledge, while also encouraging students to ask difficult questions about the nature of that knowledge. There are important questions about generalizability, the nature of evidence, and subjective experience with the supernatural. There are questions about the methods of religious knowledge production, such as communal ritual, prayer, meditation, and interpretation of sacred texts. There’s also the fact that different religious traditions make competing claims about reality. These are all legitimate matters to consider critically and, hopefully, students will begin to recognize that there are limits to religious knowledge.

In fact, if there is one important lesson of the TOK course overall, it’s that there are always limits to human knowledge. Nevertheless, it remains human nature to ask big questions and seek the answers to those questions. For Helen — like most people on the planet — religion is an important aspect of how they grapple with life’s quandries. For this reason, the “Knowledge and Religion” theme deserves a place in the TOK classroom. Can we claim to advance international-mindedness without it?

References

Augenstein, D. (2015). Freedom of religion and the politics of the liberal public-private divide. Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy, 44(1), 8-23.

Hackett, C., Stonawski, M., Tong, Y., Kramer, S., Shi, A., & Fahmy, D. (2025). How the global religious landscape changed from 2010 to 2020. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/06/09/how-the-global-religious-landscape-changed-from-2010-to-2020/

Hackett, C., Stonawski, M., Tong, Y., Kramer, S., Shi, A. F., & Zanetti, N. (2025). Religious Composition by Country, 2010-2020. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/feature/religious-composition-by-country-2010-2020/

International Baccalaureate Organization (2019). What is an IB education? About the International Baccalaureate (IB). https://www.ibo.org/about-the-ib/

Schwab, J. J. (1978). Science, curriculum, and liberal education (I. Westbury & N. J. Wilkof, Eds.). University of Chicago Press.

Stuart, J., VanderKamp, E, Sawtell, E., and Halic, O. (2024). The International Baccalaureate in the United States: Growth, access and outcomes. IB Research Department. International Baccalaureate Organization. http://www.ibo.or/en/research/

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