insideout

As I continue to revise my IB Theory of Knowledge course, here’s a new small piece I’m adding to my unit on Emotion.

The unit’s culminating project is having students develop a presentation sharing the different ways emotion helps and hinders our search for knowledge.

I’m going to do a short lesson on the movie “Inside Out” immediately prior to giving students instructions on the final project. It will be after we have already spent a few days on the topic.

First, student will read this NY Times article, The Science of ‘Inside Out.’ Here’s a key quote from it:

emotions organize — rather than disrupt — rational thinking. Traditionally, in the history of Western thought, the prevailing view has been that emotions are enemies of rationality and disruptive of cooperative social relations.

I’ll ask students to identify the key points the article makes about the role of emotion in our lives.

After a short discussion, I’ll show the first scene in this collection of clips from the film, which clearly demonstrate how emotions do indeed organizing our thinking:

And then, just for a quick wrap-out, I’ll show the first four minutes of this clip giving a scientific overview of the science behind how the movie viewed emotions:

Any other ideas?