Teaching Logic & Critical Thinking to Your Kids

Cover of Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking

It’s pleasing to know that parents are taking a more proactive role in the education of their children, whether or not they are homeschooling. I’ve been asked if I can recommend tools that could be used to teach children the elements of logic and critical thinking.

1. My first suggestion is that the best way to teach children how to think critically is to be a visible model of critical thinking. Children have a far greater aptitude for critical thinking than adults credit them for. They tend to be good at inferential reasoning. Their powers are limited in part by their limited storehouse of information from which to make inferences.
2. Modeling excellence in critical thinking presupposes skill in critical thinking. So parents need to be students of logic and critical thinking themselves. Unfortunately, most have not had the opportunity for formal education in these skills. But there are accessible books to consider. I’ll add a list of recommendations at the end of this post.
3. If your children see you making the attempt to sharpen your skills in reasoning, this will itself be a good example to them. You can tell them what you’re learning.
4. Learn the names of basic inferential moves (for example modus ponens, modus tollens) and use these labels with your children when they demonstrate their own ability to make such moves. This should reinforce their awareness of the significance of their mental powers, and affirm them in the use of their powers.
5. Encourage your children to think about the implications of something they have said or heard. You’ll have to be alert to opportunities for this. But once you’ve been at it for awhile, you’ll get into a natural groove. It will eventually become a part of your routine interaction with your kids. How to do this? I’ll save that for another post sometime.
6. Get your children reading at their grade level (or above!) books that exemplify and encourage critical thinking. Mystery and suspense novels, carefully selected for their sophistication and interest, can be useful. I read the Hardy Boys as a kid. I also liked the stories of the Sugar Creek Gang.
7. If you’re home schooling (or not), you can include in the curriculum some materials that teach critical thinking. The Fallacy Detective is a good source for this. (See below.)

Recommendations:

So, here are a few of the many resources available. I’m recommending those that provide a good place to start. Each title is linked to its Amazon page.

Books that inspire parents and other educators to teach children these skills:

• The most impressive books I’ve seen for this were written by Isaac Watts (born 1674), the great pastor and hymn writer. They are Logic: The Right Use of Reason in the Inquiry After Truth, and  The Improvement of the Mind: A Supplement to Logic, with A Discourse on the Education of Children and Youth.

Books for self-education in logic and critical thinking:

• 

  Quickstudy Reference Guide at Amazon

  Begin with D. Q. McInerny, Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking. See my post about this book here.

• Next, study a more detailed text. I recommend Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide, by Tracy Bowell and Gary Kemp (also discussed here).
• For convenient reference, have a copy of A Rulebook for Arguments, by Anthony Weston.
• For very quick reference and review, you might want to have the Quickstudy Reference Guide on Logic.

With adequate preparation in the early years, children in junior high and high school may be ready to work through these books themselves. They don’t provide a complete education in logic, but they are satisfactory for pre-college preparation. For more rigorous study in high school, I recommend using one of two textbooks:

• Irving M. Copi, Introduction to Logic—available in numerous editions, this is the classic textbook for college-level logic.
• Patrick J. Hurley, A Concise Introduction to Logic—also available in several editions.

Like most textbooks, Copi and Hurley are pricey. So you may want to settle for a second-hand copy. The illustrations and exposition of old editions will be dated, but the logic will be the same! I shop for second-hand books at AbeBooks.com.

For grade school and up:

• Nathaniel Bludorn and Hans Bludorn, The Fallacy Detective: Thirty-Eight Lessons on How to Recognize Bad Reasoning.
• Nathaniel Bludorn and Hans Bludorn, The Thinking Toolbox: Thirty-Five Lessons That Will Build Your Reasoning Skills.
• Nathaniel Bludorn and Hans Bludorn, Logic in 100 Minutes.

Fiction classics for youth:

• Franklin W. Dixon, The Hardy Boys Series (complete set here; starter set here)
• Carolyne Keene, Nancy Drew Series (partial six-book set; complete set here)
• Paul Hutchens, Sugar Creek Gang (starter set of six books)

This post is cross-referenced in an interesting post here.

Related Posts by Doug Geivett:

• Teaching Philosophy of Religion to Junior High Kids

Best Reason for Homeschooling

“Homeschooling” is a noun; “homeschool” is sometimes a noun, sometimes a verb. “We homeschooled our daughters”—verb, past tense. Also, a true sentence.

This week we move our second daughter to university. She, like her older sister did, begins one year sooner than she would have if she had not been homeschooled. But this is not why she was homeschooled.

We began homeschooling in 1998, in part as a convenience for our family while I enjoyed a sabbatical at the University of Oxford. Homeschooling was portable. It was a reasonable experiment. Also a successful experiment.

At that point, our older daughter had been to public school for kindergarten and first and second grades. These were not bad experiences. But there was something missing. Later, she experimented with a return to public school in high school and changed her mind after one semester.

Our younger daughter was homeschooled from the beginning, but attended junior high for two years at an excellent private school. Then it was back to homeschooling.

Each year, and for each of our daughters, we made the best decision we could about their education. This is a parent’s responsibility. Thankfully, it is a freedom we still enjoy.

With each decision we considered several things:

1. Where could they be taught what they needed to know?
2. How would they be taught what they needed to know?
3. Would the things they would be taught be true?
4. Would they be taught how to think intelligently for themselves?
5. Would they eventually be able to teach themselves the truth about things yet to be learned?
6. Would they be treated fairly and respectfully by their teaching authorities?
7. Would they be learning in a physically safe environment?
8. Would they be learning in an emotionally healthy environment?

These were our major questions. Athletic programs, music programs, theater programs, and the like, were important but secondary. Whatever talent they had for any of these things deserved development, but not at the risk of shrinking—or, God forbid, losing—their souls.

Now I think of it, much of our concern reduced to three basic things, revolving round one major concept: (1) proper respect for truth; (2) effectual methods of obtaining truth; and, (3) behavior in accordance with truth.

The second of these depends on growth in reasoning powers and skill in assessing evidence. It’s here where many educational options in the United States prove so terribly inadequate.

I was reminded of this today when I came across a nice little article by Susan Wise Bauer, called “Dodging the Homeschool Stereotype.” She explains why she opted for homeschooling in the style of classical education:

Classical education leans heavily on the evaluation of evidence: The educated child learns to avoid logical fallacies, to decide whether arguments are trustworthy or flawed.

I believe she’s right when she adds:

And both secular and religious classrooms are prone to simplistic thinking.

The reasons why traditional classrooms, whether secular or religious, are prone to simplistic thinking deserves development in other posts. But I stress the point that simplistic thinking is the blight of current cultural discourse, infecting all of our institutions—political, educational, ecclesiastical—and methods of knowledge management—schools, media, church, and home.

It happens that homeschooling is susceptible to the same infection. But it need not be. And parents have more direct control over this dimension of childhood education if they do not rely on traditional classrooms.

Homeschooling is a choice. Parents must be free to exercise the option. The future of our culture, the outlook for the common good, may depend on the success of homeschooling.

A Poll for Twenty-Somethings and Thirty-Somethings

If you’re in your 20s or 30s, I invite you to participate in this poll.

As you think about common characteristics of your generation, indicate which of the following statements you agree with and which you disagree with. Please use the reply box below.

1. “My generation is driven by our individual needs and desires, and pursuing our own individual happiness is the most important thing.”
2. “My generation thinks it’s more important for children to learn to think for themselves than to learn to respect authority.”
3. “Members of generation would say, ‘As long as I believe in myself, I really don’t care what other people think.’”
4. “Probably, most of my generation would agree with this statement: ‘It doesn’t really matter if you’re a Communist or not—this is America, and you can be one if you want.’”
5. “My generation thinks that if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”
6. “Older generations trusted God, the church, government, and their elders. My generation questions things and people that earlier generations never would have.”
7. “In my generation, as opposed to my parents’ or my grandparents’, we’re told to express our feelings and anger and sadness about our surroundings and not to hold them in.”