ARE OXIDATION NUMBERS REAL

So if any of you chem taking students out there have checked the IB syllabus conveniently located in the front section of each set of notes, you would have noticed the question in this title preceded by TOK:. This is probaby a reason why IB questions always seem so easy in comparison with Cambridge questions, and they probably are.

Hurr durr IBO says, everything must have TOK in it. Then we can become better and more awesome people because we can question our knowledge of things. The thing is, does it even matter? Maybe it's good that my teacher never discussed this learning aim, he probably realises that it's quite dumb to do so.

IB student who is too stupid to think for himself and thinks syllabus = ownage:
OMG OXIDATION NUMBERS AREN'T REAL. That means that the foundation of my chemistry knowledge is questionable and therefore we should come up with a better theory that can be verified through ways of knowing better.

Except that of course a lot of things aren't "real" and we're perfectly happy to use them. Numbers aren't real, money isn't real (it's just a piece of paper that SAYS it's worth x dollars) (and if you can lend out 10 times the amount of money you actually have in actual reserves...) So while people spend a lesson arguing about the reality of oxidation numbers (as well as VSEPR and the other weird chemical constructs which are about as real as Sheu Zhi having a loving and caring relationship with Jessica Alba) the JC people don't bother and use the same time to learn about how to do real questions.

This explains why our Oly results suck.

If you check the organic chem book there's more stupid tok questions about language in chemistry (IUPAC names) and whatnot, wow who gives a damn really. TOK is stupid, and no student will want to waste lesson time learning useless things he can't use in an exam. Or is even really that relevant to the subject.

edit: LOL EVERYTHING IS ACTUALLY POWERED BY MAGICAL FAIRIES. THROUGH REASONING I WILL NOW OBTAIN A TRULY WONDERFUL PROOF OF THIS THEOREM

actually how do you deal with unfalsifiability with tok, i mean its like you cant know so ???

tldr tok is dum