ANOTHER OPEN LETTER TO HOME SCHOOLERS
By Jon Rappoport
Author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS COURSE
JUNE 7, 2010. Home-schooling parents do what they do for different reasons. For some, the main thrust is getting their kids out of public schools. Others want to give their children specific religious education. In some cases, what actually happens in the home-school classroom is secondary.
I’m interested in the fact that home-schooling parents can give their kids a far better education on their own. It’s possible. It’s happening all over the world every day. The standards of some home schools are extraordinary. In those cases, the parents have a passion about knowledge and achievement, and the children do, too.
If you are one of those parents, for whom what happens in your classroom is of paramount importance, I’m talking to you. I’m also talking to parents who want to strive to make their classrooms reach new levels of accomplishment.
I wish to point out that the subject and discipline called logic is a foundation stone of a superior education. It can’t be ignored.
Unfortunately, it has been ignored. Why? Because logic as a distinct pursuit has become invisible in almost every culture. It has been forgotten to the point where most people don’t even know it exists. So how could they remedy the problem?
Most children who learn something about logic find it peripherally through other subjects, like mathematics and chemistry. They sense its presence lurking in the background.
However, a true and specific study of logic is much more powerful than what can be surmised through related subjects.
Logic is its own territory with its own knowledge. That became true for the first time in history, 2400 years ago, in ancient Greece, when Aristotle wrote about it.
In those sections of his massive work where Aristotle took up logic, he wasn’t writing about science or mathematics or history or literature. He was carving out a singular path.
There was a more recent time, a hundred years ago, when logic still had some life left in it, in public schools. Young students were taught the so-called logical fallacies. These fallacies were errors that could occur in any presentation on any subject, in any debate or argument.
The understanding of logical fallacies was a durable tool one could use for his whole life.
It still is.
However, to make the tool work, we need to present young students with realistic passages of text, the sort of material they encounter in real life, not just in some abstract little fantasy world.
Students need to chew on these passages and learn how to find the logical fallacies contained in them. This is called work. It isn’t meant to be a walk in the park. This isn’t about winning gold stars for “being you.” It isn’t about pouring endless “positive messages” into children’s heads with the hope that you can force them to have “self-esteem.”
When kids learn logic and learn how to use it well against real articles and press releases and political-speak and subtle sales pitches, they gain a tremendous confidence that is a true version of self-esteem. They become strong and very, very smart.
When I designed my course, after 25 years of experience as a journalist, I wrote passages that resemble very closely what you read in newspapers, magazines, books, and on the Net. I embedded logical fallacies in these pieces, so students could root them out and examine them and realize what was going on.
We live in an age of propaganda. Smearing one’s opponent, using innuendo, making statements solely calculated to bring out emotional responses in the audience, building vague circumstantial arguments, repeating the same half-truths over and over, distorting history—these tactics are just the beginning of what often passes for truth in our time.
Students (and adults) need to be able to see through such nonsense, and they need to have the ability to take it apart piece by piece, like a clock that runs on the wrong time.
Students need to have the power to see what basic principles a person is arguing from—to see through the obscuring haze of emotional appeal to the heart of the matter.
Students need to be able to differentiate between good evidence and flimsy evidence, when they are considering an argument that is trying to win their support.
These are not small matters.
For example, many years ago, I interviewed a rather popular politician in depth. I asked him a number of questions, aimed at trying to find out what his basic principles of government consisted of. It was like pulling teeth, but I finally got through the operation and discovered…nothing. He was a rank opportunist, and the slogans he floated were no more than attempts to maintain support from his constituents, so he could stay in office.
When I pointed this out to him, he smiled. He said, in an unguarded moment, “What do you think politics is about?”
This was early in my career as a reporter, and I thought to myself, “I’m on the right track.”
I had spent several years, as a student, studying logic, and without it, I never would have been able to dissect this hoaxster and penetrate his defenses.
Somewhere along the line, we need to make a stand. We need to deal with information and people, when it’s important, by using real logic in real situations. There is a great deal at stake.
Young people can learn logic with tremendous enthusiasm. They can discover an essential tool for approaching information in all forms.
A home school with logic as part of its curriculum can become a powerhouse.
I fully realize that parents need to learn logic first, before they teach it. They need to study the course themselves and master it. So I’m available, during this process, to answer any and all questions that arise.
Logic is a great adventure. A person can embark on the adventure at any time, by deciding to.
Jon Rappoport 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, and has tutored extensively in remedial English at Santa Monica College. At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy. Jon can be reached at qjrconsulting@gmail.com