As I’ve previously written, Alice Mercer has been gracious enough to observe my IB Theory of Knowledge classes for the past two years, write a post about it, and ask students to respond (see What My Students Told Alice Mercer About Our TOK Class).

Anytime either one of us writes about IB (and, I suspect, anytime others write about it), we get comments from people attacking it for being a United Nations conspiracy to take over the world. Neither of us usually publish them, but you can get a taste of the flavor of the comments at Alice’s post today titled Response to a Comment.

I always show them to my students though, because these attacks offer a great learning opportunity. For example, after they read Alice’s post this week, I’ll have them read a New York Times article about the opponents of the IB program and explore their website.

Then, I’ll ask them:

Why do they think people are attacking TOK and IB, how does it make them feel, and do they think any of those arguments have any validity?

Any other ideas of what could have my students do or write?