During this summer break, I went to the beach and after to Aspen, Colorado to ski 14 days. Beautiful weather, great snow, and many great experiences, such as helliski and cat ski. However, something that caught my attention was when I was going down a regular blue run and I saw two young, small kids going down the mountain in about 80 km/hr. They had something different in them: a yellowish vest on, and they were going down as if they had already trained sometime: they did the same movements, went in the same tracks, everything the same. I began to look at that in amazement, it really did catch my attention. I began to follow them. When I got a few feet close to them, they did not look at me. However, one of them, the one that was last on the "trail", sort of felt my presence nearby, and quickly skied the other direction. Peculiar, yet strange to me. I began to look more carefully, the way they communicated, the way they looked, etc.. I then found out that they did not say anything: they communicated through sounds. I then remembered the last time I saw these people in yellowish vests: they were blinds. However, the others had an assistant with them. In this case, none of the boys had assistance. I began to wonder: how can these two blind boys ski without hitting anything? I then began to look at the things we learned in TOK. Maybe schema, language does apply to this. Memorisation as well. These blind kids had skied so many times in that run, that they memorised the steps or paths they had to take in order to ski without hitting anyone. They also might see some light, and have a certain schema that allows them to be able to know where people are. It was really strange. Also, blind people have good listening skills. They can hear you miles away. I am pretty certain that these kids could hear my skies going down the mountain a couple of miles away from them, and that is why they could change directions so easily to dodge from someone. After this incident, I began to ponder: do blind people live in different worlds? How are they able to ride safety if they live in different worlds? I do believe blind people live in different worlds, they have a different language and they adapt to their conditions. But these two kids had a different aspect to them. They did live in our world, but they also lived in their own blind world. In other words, they lived in two worlds. How is this even possible?
Good work, Rodrigo. This is exactly the kind of observation and thought I'm looking for. In addition to noticing and asking questions about the blind skiers, you began to take your inquiry further by using ToK concepts. The more you do this, the richer your responses will become. Now that we've been studying reasoning, you can think about the type of reasoning you used to conclude that the skiers were blind, including reading the symbol of the yellow vest. There are lots of places to dig into this event you experienced. You're on the right track in that you notices something and began to ask yourself questions about it. The next step is to continue tying your thoughts to concepts we've studied and to use the language of knowledge. In this case, you stumbled upon the skiers' procedural knowledge.
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