

Teaching Logic In Elementary School - augiehill

What do you think? Good or bad idea?<p>My personal feeling is that logical proofs are just as important as multiplication tables, and that students should learn basic logic starting in early elementary school soon after they start reading. It's crazy that most people never learn how to reason properly. I lucked out because I took some philosophy classes around that age (thanks mom and dad!) and now I'm a computer science grad student. It pisses me off to no end when people can't put together a logical argument or point out the obvious problems in other's arguments.
======
grovulent
I wish I had time to write a longer reply because this sort of question has
been on my mind lately and I have a lot to say about it. I teach logic at the
university level. Given my experiences I've come to think that it's difficult
to justify even at that level.

At the very least, I think we have to come up with more sophisticated
arguments to convince students of its relevance (for those who aren't going on
to study computer science). Year after year, I've seen our institution (and
this applies to my own contribution) - fail to present that argument in a way
that is convincing to students. I've come to believe that this is not a result
of superficial engagement with the concepts by the students. Even my best
students remain skeptical as to the relevance of logic. Rather I think they
are reacting to a genuine concern about the usefulness of logic given it's
actual nature.

To explain fully why would take some time - and I've got half a large blog
post waiting to be finished on the matter. But for example - students get
jaded when we logicians tell them that:

This apple is green. Therefore, it is not red.

Is NOT a logically valid argument. But hang on they argue - you told us that a
logically valid argument is one where the truth of the premises necessitates
the truth of the conclusion. How does this argument fail to qualify?

They become even more jaded when we tell them that the logical form of English
indicative conditionals such as:

If the moon is made of cheese, then Sarah Palin is the president of the United
States.

are best represented by the material conditional. We present detailed and
sophisticated arguments for this conclusion. But no matter how clearly we
present the case, students remain frustrated over the fact that if that is a
material conditional then it's true - even though we suppose that there is no
connection between the moon being cheese and Sarah Palin being president.

There are countless other examples. The point though is that you can't just
dismiss student frustration. Because no matter how tight your argument for the
material conditional as being the logical form of that English sentence, you
just can't deploy that knowledge in any normal context of dispute. If any
argument in the real world hinged on the truth of an indicative conditional -
trying to convince them that it is indeed true because it's a material
conditional with a false antecedent is simply absurd - and the students know
it.

As it happens, I do have an argument for the importance of understanding
logic. But it's involved and subtle - and still it leaves logic as something
that you can't really deploy in a day to day context. It's certainly not
something that to which you'd want to subject elementary students. Other than
that, the only clear use for the knowledge of logic is in the technology
sector and philosophy. This is a path of specialisation that shouldn't be
imposed on children at such a young age.

Just my two cents...

