In life, everyone follows many different ways of knowing, including, reason, emotion, memory, imagination, intuition, sense perception, language, and faith. But which one do we use more in certain aspects of our lives. 

To answer this question Theory of Knowledge students asked a multitude of teachers and students which Way of Knowing played a crucial role in their everyday life. The answers were immensely different and equally surprising. 

One surprise was our assumption that language teachers would find their fundamental way of knowing to be language.  However, this was not the case. Spanish teacher Ms. Patricia Muro chose reason, along with the 44 percent of other participants. 

In fact, the survey conducted, shows that reason was the most central Way of Knowing within Greeley West students and staff, which can be explained by certain core defenses we build up throughout our lives. 

With the fear of risk and failure, almost everyone puts their thoughts and decisions through reason. As the IB coordinator, Ms. Marie Beach said, “My first instinct was to do intuition or emotion, but then I realized that before I make any decision I use reason.” 

Many of the math teachers chose memory or reason but surprisingly, science teacher Mr. Ryan Pace chose intuition which differs from his colleagues.

The least ranked according to our survey is language. This is very surprising because language is used every day. It’s being used even now to write this article. 

Even more surprising is when asking students, the response is overwhelmingly different than with teachers. This may explain why many students need extra help with work if they learn differently than their teachers. 

Adults chose an overwhelming amount of reason and logic, when students gave their answer they mainly picked imagination and emotion. This could be explained by the concept of “the faculty of wonder” and how adults lose the ability to wonder about the world, while students still have many different ways of thought. 

In conclusion, reason is still a key aspect of everyone’s life, whether is it proving an equation, writing a paper, or even just deciding what coffee to buy in the morning, it has to be the most influential Way of Knowing. However, we need to remember that no one can rely to heavily on one Way of Knowing, as they all need to have a part in our thought process, in order to be more reliable and valid with our personality.