This blog is shared by Mr. Fitzgerald and his Summer School Students at International School Bangkok.
English 11/12 Summer School Project: What Is On Your Cave Wall; the Will to Meaning: Who am I? How do I Know?
This summer we will be working on a project together. This is a Multi-media response project that requires a personal response from each student. These “responses” will utilize Power Point, video, photographs, animation and music—ultimately each student will decide what she or he wishes to include, but each student will be encouraged to use a variety of technology systems. We will work on this project each day in class during our first summer session. Students publish what they have created on their individual blogs. Individual student blogs are located on the page ”Student E-Folios/Blogs.”
The inspiration for this project comes from three main sources: the International Baccalaureate (IB) Syllabus: Theory of Knowledge (TOK) Class; Viktor Frankl’s, Man’s Search for Meaning; and Plato’s, “The Allegory of the Cave.”
Theory of Knowledge: The“flagship” element in the IB curriculum is a class called Theory of Knowledge (TOK). The following excerpt is part of the IB Syllabus, “The TOK course . . . encourages critical thinking about knowledge itself, to try to help young people make sense of what they encounter.”
Man’s Search for Meaning: Central to the understanding of Viktor Frankl’s theory of Logotherapy is his concept of Will to Meaning. Frankl makes the distinction between his Will to Meaning and Sigmund Freud’s Will to Pleasure and Alfred Adler’s, Will to Power. Frankl discusses his concept in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, “Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment” (Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 98. Signet, 1985).
“The Allegory of the Cave”: Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” dates from the fourth century B.C. In his allegory Plato addresses a variety of the ways we (human beings) know: what we perceive with our senses, our minds, and our imaginations.
The topic of this project derives from concepts discussed in The International Baccalaureate’s Theory of Knowledge class: Who Am I? How do I know? This project will count as 10% of the summer school student’s final grade; this is different than their Formal Oral Presentations!
The Will To Meaning, Viktor Frankl
“The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato
