OPEN LETTER TO HOME SCHOOLERS
By Jon Rappoport
Author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS COURSE
JUNE 3, 2010. When logic is taught at all, it is usually handled in an abstract fashion. Students examine very simple patterns of reasoning and learn which patterns are correct and which are incorrect.
When analysis of realistic text is taught at all, it usually involves dissecting literature to find out what the author is “really trying to say.”
I wasn’t satisfied with either approach. So when I created my course, I changed the priorities. Students do learn something about abstract thinking—but they are also taught how the most important and destructive fallacies seep into news reports, PR releases, scientific journalism, internet editorials, and political arguments.
The core of the course consists of text passages that resemble the kind of information people encounter every day. These passages contain multiple logical errors, and with the help of the teacher, students root out the errors and, in the process, become much smarter, much sharper, less easily fooled.
The Founders of this country wrote a 1st Amendment to the Constitution that enshrined free speech as an essential element in the new Republic. They clearly understood that, for this to work, citizens needed to be able to analyze information and make independent choices in every area of life.
Or to put it another way, if citizens were unable to handle free speech (uncontrolled information), the whole Republic would sink into a swamp. Deception and confusion would reign, and the basic principles of the Great American Experiment would drown in a sea of forgetfulness.
Look around you. Look at the size and power of central government. Compare this situation to the content of the Constitution and its forthright description of limited government.
What happened?
Well, one of the chief things that happened was the gradual diminishing of the Citizen Mind.
In particular, citizens lost the ability to analyze and see through the ongoing political debate about the future course of the Republic.
Logic, which was first revealed to the world in the cradle of Western civilization, Athens, 2400 years ago, has faded from the education curriculum and sunk below the waves.
I created my course as a step toward restoring the genuine power of the individual. After all, at the heart of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is the determination to form a society in which the individual is primary. If that is lost, we have lost everything.
I believe home schooling is our last and best opportunity to elevate the individual to his/her rightful place.
I understand that parents have many reasons for wanting to home school. Among these reasons is the desire to avoid the social engineering that has been injected into the public educational system. However, clinging to the conventional curriculum in the classroom, even if that classroom is the living room or the kitchen or the patio, is not going to remedy all the problems of public schooling.
The great missing factor in public schools is logic, as it was once taught. Information without true logic is like government without a Constitution. The result is a spreading fungus.
Feel free to contact me with inquiries. I’m happy to send you an outline of the 18-lesson LOGIC AND ANALYSIS course.
Jon Rappoport is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for high school students and adults. He has been working as an investigative reporter for 25 years. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. He has taught in several private schools in New York and Los Angeles. At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy. Mr. Rappoport can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com His work can be found at www.nomorefakenews.com and www.insolutions.info