TOK RESOURCE.ORG

AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE:
HISTORY
DRAW HISTORY

A TOK CLASSIC!

“Draw History” is a traditional TOK activity in IB schools around the world. It can be astonishingly generative. I first saw it 30 years ago at the Washington International School during a CIS accreditation visit.

Draw History is guaranteed to get students thinking out of the box and will provide a pool of reference points for understanding history as an Area of Knowledge, and as an existential essential. Student drawings from my own classes over the years have included: an entropy-driven arrow of time; points of order and connectivity in a sea of chaos; the "fall" from an original "golden dawn"; a mostly blank page with a few timid scratchings; a series of great white men; a bloody rendering in red; an endless gyrating cycle of repetition; and a spiky graph of ascent and decline, with time on the horizontal axis.

CLASS ACTIVITY I: EVOKE HISTORY WITHOUT WORDS

Students work alone. Provide some plain paper and some bold writing utensils including a few colors. Without preamble or prior warning, students are allowed five minutes to do nothing less than "Draw History." Tell them that a constraint is that they must not use any words. If the momentum fades, invite students to produce alternative drafts that capture different aspects of the nature of history.

Next arrange students in pairs. Invite them to explain their drawings to each other and come up with further refinements to their drafts, and alternative drafts. Again, no words are allowed in the images. 

Finally ask students to produce a single finished legibly signed drawing. Ask students to write on a separate piece of paper a single sentence encapsulation of the aspect of history evoked in their image. Collect the drawings and the papers.

Prepare a "greatest hits" slideshow selection of the most interesting images and written encapsulations. Project images at the beginning of the next class asking students to defend and explicate their work.

DRAW HISTORY SLIDESHOW—HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2023

CLASS ACTIVITY II: CUBIST HISTORY

This activity is all about a cubist approach to history; not the history of cubism. No spoilers—don’t mention multiple perspective until the class discussion unfolds!

The three images in the carousel are all cubist portraits by Pablo Picasso. The model in all cases was his mistress Dora Maar. The first two were both painted in 1937. Portrait with the hat was rendered in 1941.

Start the activity by projecting the images, sharing the context, and asking the class what seems to be going on in these paintings? Allow the students to air their thoughts but resist the temptation to say too much at this stage. 

Cubist portrait recipe

• Find a partner

• On a single sheet of white paper draw a frontal and profile cartoon portrait of your partner at the same scale.

• Cut out both images with scissors

• Cut up each of the images into 8 contrasting geometric shapes

• Rearrange the shapes to form a cubist-style, esthetically pleasing portrait

• Glue; and take a photo

FOR WHOLE CLASS DISCUSSION

1. Acknowledging the contrivance, and stretching the point as far as you can, make a list of the aspects of the cubist approach to painting which have a resemblance to what historians actually do. 

2. To what extent is making a cubist painting like doing history