REPORT -An Insightful TOK Interaction with Mr. Anand Vandrevala

An Insightful TOK Interaction with Mr. Anand Vandrevala

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”

-Socrates

Any TOK educator shall, without second thought, concur. I am no different.

After an intellectually invigorating academic session of TOK lessons with the HFSI IBDP cohorts of ’24 and ‘25, it was time to revel in the beauty of moving from the plane of theory to practice – the result? A successful Theory of Knowledge interaction with Mr. Anand Vandrevala, the talented grandson of Dr. Niranjan Hiranandani – intended to help students explore the avenues of knowledge vis-à-vis dialectical discourse. Held on August 9, 2023, the interaction with the students of IGCSE and IBDP1 and IBDP2 was a blazing testimony to the spirit of enquiry sparked by TOK as an integral component of the curriculum.

After careful deliberation and research, the students of the IB diploma programme had picked their prompt (the role of new knowledge in changing existing belief systems and values) and come up with novel and inventive ideas to justify their stance in relation to the prompt. The protracted brainstorming session with our Head of School, Mrs. Kalyani Patnaik, the TOK facilitators at school and their moderator Neev Ramani (a DP1 student) resulted in incisive, penetrating commentaries alongside distinctive stances and diverse perspectives that acknowledged and celebrated the beauty of plurality of meaning/s in a course component like TOK. It was incredible to see Mr. Anand Vandrevala offer his unique insights as our Head of School offered intriguing examples of how new knowledge could result in changing established beliefs and values.

It was interesting to see how every now and then, a student from the audience would make an alternate contention and another student on the other end of the table would, with remarkable and impressive patience and dexterity, offer piercing and perceptive insight on the matter championing both their stance and accommodating the contrasting opinion with unequivocal respect and humility. In fact, some of the kids even offered examples and real-world contexts in which the differing contention would be valid, thereby, attesting to the wondrous appeal of a subject that celebrates multiplicity of meaning and consequently, the complexity of life itself.

Overall, the session was a huge success and the students related to Mr. Vandrevala’s experiential journey and his excitement to begin school at UCLA as it mirrored as well as predicted their own. Students felt immensely happy about the session and are eager to host more such sessions in future.

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