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Has anyone used a Logic curriculum? I need advice.
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I think I have a future law student on my hands, so I want to add a Logic curriculum to her studies next year. I am wondering if anyone has used either Traditional Logic by Memoria Press or Introductory Logic by Wilson and Nance (Cannon Press). What did you like or not like? Are there other great programs I may not know about?
Are the DVD’s necessary/helpful? I am entering unchartered water here and need all the help I can get
.Thanks,
Heather
Heather, I have only very briefly looked at formal logic programs. They scared me. 🙂 But my dh is an attorney and I asked him about some of the things we’ve done/seen and what would be helpful. He said formal logic might be nice, but wasn’t really necessary. They don’t use traditional formal logic in law school or work. They kind of have their own hybrid. Formal logic is actually more closely associated with math than with legal studies or work. He said the most important thing that helped him, was having had a class that used Socratic method–this would be much more helpful for developing the skills needed for law school and future work, he thought. That and lots and lots and lots of English (which he didn’t like at the time, but wished he’d taken more later) He said if you were looking for a formal logic curriculum, try and find one that also had informal logic, as for law school you’ll want to be good at first identifying premises and then demolishing the arguments using knowledge of fallacies (which is informal logic)
Socratic method………….hmmm, that brings up a good topic. I’ve always been torn between having my dc just narrate, whether orally or written and not ask questions vs. asking socratic type questions. I love CM’s philosophy, but I know I can use, tweak and use a mixer of methods that fit our homeschool.
I have Teaching the Classics. I’ve watched it a couple of times, but I never implemented it. I was never taught to think in PS, but I would love my children to develop this skill. I also have Teaching the Classics – Worldview Supplement on my wishlist. I do want my children to be “thinkers” not just regurgitate information. I think it’s a very important skill for life in general, especially when there are so many conflicting worldviews out in the world.
Any thoughts?
Bookworm,
Logic scares me too! I admit that the informal logic sounds way more interesting to me than the formal kind. But do I really want to improve my daughter’s argueing skills? HMMMMM……I’ll have to think on that one
.Thank you (and your DH too) for the advice. I will look into the Socratic method, as I am clueless as to what that is.
Heather
Do you have any debate classes in your area? That may help teach her how to form an argument and defend it.
Sharon, I have a friend who began using Teaching the Classics this year; I need to touch base with her and see how it’s going. To be honest, I’m old enough to remember 70’s TV and “The Paper Chase” scared me with the examples of Socratic questioning–it would be a very unnatural method for me to use, myself. My dh could pull it off, I’m sure, after law school! I am all for teaching thinking! I would think it would be hard and time-consuming to apply Socratic questioning to very much at a time–it would be kind of like doing intense poetry analysis on EVERY poem you read —but I’m sure it’d be valuable in its place.
Heather–I hear you about being uncertain about increasing arguing skills! We’ve had some interesting debates in our home since we began informal logic–nothing like being told by your 15yo that you’re using a propaganda technique or you just committed a part-to-whole fallacy . . . LOL We finally had to set a house rule that if Mama says it, it’s legitimate distraction and NOT a red herring. 🙂
Hi ladies, I’m new here and this is my first post but I wanted to chime in because we are very Socratic around here (although we do a lot of narration as well
). I have found the single best help if you want to incorporate more Socractic questioning with your kids (I would recommend for logic stage and older…kids under 5th would benefit more from the narration). It’s from Edupress and it’s called Quick Flip Questions for Critical Thinking. You can see it here: http://teachchildren.com/ep-504.html It’s just this little hand-help flip chart with 6 levels of questions that start with sample questions for knowledge and move up to questions for comprehension, application, synthesis analysis and evaluation. So when we are studying something and I want to find out if they are able to apply the information, I’ll flip to application and use some of the questions. Or if I want to know if they can synthesize the info, flip to synthesis, etc.. It is truly one of the greatest finds of my 5 years of homeschooling. I have two, just in case. ! I’m sorry I can’t help with the logic question…we’re just starting Fallacy Detective this year so I’m green!Hi, I just wanted to add that we are using Teaching the Classics and really like it. I have both my kids narrate for our daily reading. Then, with selected literature titles, we use THC and the socratic questioning. My kids are both young, grades 2 and4, but it has allowed them to understand what questions to ask of a book to find out about different elements such as setting, character and so on. It has even helped me to understand literature better. I highly recommend it.
~Michelle
We have also using Teaching the Classics and my girls loved it. I also found the Socratic list great for our discussions on various books they were reading. We have not done any formal logic, I did not feel it was necessary. We do lots of discussion and I think that has worked well for us. We do not use the Socratic list of questions for every book, mostly we still do written opinions/different types of essays and narrations – but two or three books we look at with the Socratic list to hand. Adam Andrews has done a great job with Teaching the Classics and I recommend it for high school especially, though you can learn the method for very young children as well.
Heather, I JUST found a resource that might be terrific for your daughter! We just started The Teaching Company’s video series The Art of Argumentation. It is FANTASTIC and dh said he wished he’d had it before he went to law school. It’s pretty high on the website but I found a used one on a forum for $34.
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