Anyone save the old logic threads by Tina in Ouray

[johnandtinagilbert]

I can't access them through links I've found via old posts, and her wisdom has twice been suggested as reading material.

 

Anybody save them? If so, can you pretty please share?!?

[TeaTotaler]

I'm not sure how my copy and paste will work but here goes:

 

Posted by Tina in Ouray, CO on 18:33 Feb 13

In Reply to: Would you all be willing to share your study of logic sequence? What did you use? What wouldn't you use again? When is "Art of Argument" appropriate to introduce? nt posted by Christy in CO

Christy,

 

I'll share the sequence that we generally follow.

 

In about 7th grade, later if need be, I teach formal Aristotelian logic using Traditional Logic (Books I and II). We sometime get through this in one year, and sometimes it drags into the following year. We take one chapter per week until the latter half of Book II. Once we get to the tail end of Book II, I don't mind slowing down. Prior to that I think it's a good idea to sort of keep the momentum going. Usually we spend a good deal of time in that second or following year very intentionally applying what we've learned to either arguments that we find in our studies or to the genesis of arguments in composition.

 

My mode-of-operation is to lecture through a chapter on Mondays and then to let my students re-read the chapter and do the corresponding exercises on their own through the rest of the week.

 

I, personally, like to teach informal logic at the same time that I teach formal logic. At the end of each class time on Mondays I present one informal fallacy. (Material like Art of Argument and Fallacy Detective teach informal fallacies.) I do it this way for two reasons. The first is that I like my students to begin to understand the difference between formal and informal logic. Studying them in opposition like this gives me a chance to repeatedly reinforce the distinctions. The former has to do with the structure or forms of argument, regardless of their content; the later has nothing to do with the form, but is concerned with the matter. I like to present informal fallacies in a little different order than either text I mentioned, so I just do my own thing. The other reason I like to do it this way is that learning informal fallacies can be lots of fun for students. I hold out this closing to each week's logic lesson like a carrot on a stick.

 

After completing this sequence in junior high (or sometimes into high school), I then begin a systematic study of classical rhetoric. The way I teach rhetoric calls for a mastery of formal logic, so we continue to hone those skills throughout high school.

 

The thing that I've given up over the years is the "pre-logic" material I used to do. I find that our time is much better invested in grammar, mathematics, and Latin. I've also used "Introductory/Intermediate Logic" (first editions) and didn't care for it.

 

Tina in Ouray, CO

 

HTH

TeaTotaler

P.S. I have another one that I will dig up and post

[TeaTotaler]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Tina in Ouray on 21:19 Sep 28

 

 

In Reply to: Can someone convince me to have my dd13 continue with Traditional Logic? She is asking me to quit... posted by Peela

I wouldn't consider finishing TL just to "check off a box." But there are some other good reasons to study logic. Traditional Logic teaches formal logic -- the study of the structure of deductive reasoning. To skip learning formal logic is like not learning basic grammar in English or basic arithmetic in Math.

 

Here are ten reasons that I've put together to remind myself about why we do this:

 

Why Study Logic?

 

The Necessity of Logic: To avoid fallacious reasoning and to reason rightly. Logic is "undeniable, unavoidable, self-evident, or self explanatory. One cannot 'not' use it." The only question is whether we reason rightly.

 

The Nature of Logic: To understand the epistemological nature of language and thinking; to learn to define terms, to make distinctions, to rightly judge, and to validly deduce truth; to encourage systematic, disciplined, orderly, and precise thinking.

 

A Tool of Learning: To understand the logical aspects of language and develop analytical skills foundational to all other disciplines, linking the formal character of reasoning to all our studies.

 

True Knowledge: To analyze and justify our beliefs and opinions and acquire true knowledge; to proportion the degree of our beliefs in accord with the grounds we have for their acceptance.

 

Our Reasonable Service: To learn to love God, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, to reason together with Him, to plead our cause before His throne, to prove what is good, and to rightly divide the word of truth.

 

Apologetics: To develop confidence in the inherent reasonableness of our faith that we might contend earnestly and honestly for it, countering destructive ideologies, "destroy[ing] speculations . . . raised up against the knowledge of God," and offering a well-reasoned defense for the hope that is in us.

 

Evangelism: To replace truth and reasonableness at the center of the gospel rather than felt need and fulfillment; to develop the intellectual categories necessary to forge connections between Christianity and culture.

 

Worship and Fellowship: To restore reason to its rightful role of informing our Christian walk and worship and enriching our friendships and fellowship.

 

Intellectual Virtue: To cultivate intellectual virtue, to nurture an ordered soul, to foster an honesty that squarely faces difficult questions, and to form a habit of wanting the truth.

 

Intellectual Tradition: To enter the Great Conversation and "come to terms" with those authors educated within the classical tradition, to connect with their way of thinking and understand the ideas it spawned. And, following in the footsteps of that same tradition, to lay a foundation for the study of classical rhetoric, the capstone of the liberal arts.

 

 

Tina in Ouray, CO

[johnandtinagilbert]

TT: I would like to officially hand the YOU ROCK award to you today :) Thank you so much. I'm saving this thread now! I look forward to the other post!

[TeaTotaler]

Here's one on Logic and Rhetoric: I sure hope Tina doesn't think I'm crazy for saving her posts:tongue_smilie:

 

Posted by Tina in Ouray, CO on 13:05 May 15

Earlier you wrote, "So . . . you convinced me. Your post and your follow-ups were extremely insightful. What do you use for teaching rhetoric? How would you spend the last 3 years of school with dc in 10th grade who haven't had any formal logic or rhetoric? How did you educate yourself in these subjects?"

 

I wish I had a simple recommendation for teaching classical rhetoric, but I don't. I'm not happy with the rigor (or lack thereof) of what is currently on the market for teaching rhetoric, and I'm not convinced that simply taking a student through Aristotle is the way to go. Part of the difficulty lies in the very nature of rhetoric within the traditional classical or medieval curriculum.

 

It wasn't at all what we've made it to be. Without meaning to sound heretical, rhetoric wasn't a developmental stage, nor was it a course taken in high school. Traditionally, historically, a liberal arts education at the secondary level was a rhetorical education. A systematic study of classical rhetoric reveals that the subject itself is composed of five parts or canons -- invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. But these parts weren't relegated to their own little place at the cursus of a classical education. J. Stephen Russell captured the elusive nature of school rhetoric when he wrote, . . . rhetoric is everywhere and nowhere in the medieval school curriculum (Chaucer and the Trivium, 53). Where then? Rhetoric was sprinkled throughout: here a little, there a little. Tropes and figures, for example, a topic we think of as part of the canon of style, were presented with examples from Latin classics and the vernacular as part of grammar. So was reading and interpreting poetry and prose. Likewise the topics of invention, by far the broadest and deepest of the canons, would have been the province of logic or dialectica. The topics of invention included such headings as definition, division, cause and effect, consequences, similarities, degree, and authority; they were the places one went to find arguments. The topics of invention encompassed both deductive and inductive (causal and analogical) reasoning.

 

So what's a modern mom to do? Not knowing what your own children have already done, I can't directly speak to your situation; I can only tell you what I have done or would do with my own students.

 

First, I routinely train my children on the progymnasmata up into high school. Though these exercises are, by definition, preliminary exercises, they are also a catch-all for introducing all the canons of rhetoric throughout the classical curriculum. Second, when my children hit thirteen or fourteen OR when they are intellectually mature enough, I teach them formal logic. This generally corresponds to about the time they hit refutation/confirmation in the progymnasmata. (I gauge their readiness for this writing exercise by their readiness for logic, not vice versa.)

 

After that -- and this is probably the part you've been waiting for -- I ideally take my children through a three-year sequence in 10th through 12th grades that I call Rhetorical Invention, Rhetorical Arrangement, and Rhetorical Style. (The other two canons of memory and delivery I teach earlier and with less formality.) This sequence, however, requires that a student has first studied formal logic. In Rhetorical Invention I incorporate a review of deductive logic and a study of material logic during the first half of the course while I teach the kinds and purposes of rhetoric, the elements of persuasive speech, stasis theory, the structure of argumentation, and the topics of invention that derive from terms in a proposition. During the second half of the year I focus on the topics of invention connected to the proposition or related to the proposition, and I simultaneously teach causal and analogous reasoning, i.e., inductive logic.

 

During Rhetorical Arrangement I generally work through the parts of a speech, the exordium, narration, thesis and division, order of arguments (on both a macro and micro-scale), argument forms, induction and analogy, refutation, means of interest, the emotional appeal, and the peroration in roughly that order. In teaching Rhetorical Style, then, we are ready to treat the subtler aspects of style with all the other parts of rhetoric already in place.

 

None of this sequence is meant to imply that these elements have not been previously met or practiced. In other words, style is an important element of our writing exercises from the time that my children first compose a sentence.

 

Oh, and did you see logic in there? That's where I'd start with a 10th grader. With a 10th grader who was a decent student, I would use Peter Kreeft's Socratic Logic instead of (or alongside) Memoria Press's Traditional Logic I and II. If you were teaching formal logic to other younger students at the same time, I'd use TLI and TLII with them and try to coordinate the two a bit. But you'll gain a lot of mileage from Socratic Logic with an older student. You'll cover some philosophy, you'll cover the basic topics of material logic, and you'll cover quite a bit of classical rhetoric in disguise.

 

I loosely have used (am using) an OOP book to structure how I teach rhetoric. But in your case I would pick up a copy of Corbett's Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. I would get this now, and I would skim through it and start to get the big picture. (It's organized according to the canons of rhetoric.) Before too long you'll see that the material covered in Socratic Logic is reviewed in the first part of Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. I'd spend a full year on Socratic Logic, then I'd move on to Corbett and spend two years there. With just these two texts in hand, and a little sweat labor, you could have a fine high school curriculum.

 

This is how I have learned. I read. I read some more. And I teach while I read again. Teaching teaches me as much as it does my students. The most important thing, in a situation like this, is that unless they are very motivated you don't leave your students on their own. Instead, work through the material with them; struggle to understand it with them; review it with them; talk about how it relates to their other work with them. And find ways to apply what they are learning to other things they are doing. If you just throw a book at them and say, Here, read this, your student isn't likely, in the end, to come away with much.

 

Good luck!

Tina in Ouray, CO

 

[johnandtinagilbert]

 

Posted by Tina in Ouray on 21:19 Sep 28

 

 

 

In Reply to: Can someone convince me to have my dd13 continue with Traditional Logic? She is asking me to quit... posted by Peela

I wouldn't consider finishing TL just to "check off a box." But there are some other good reasons to study logic. Traditional Logic teaches formal logic -- the study of the structure of deductive reasoning. To skip learning formal logic is like not learning basic grammar in English or basic arithmetic in Math.

 

Here are ten reasons that I've put together to remind myself about why we do this:

 

Why Study Logic?

 

The Necessity of Logic: To avoid fallacious reasoning and to reason rightly. Logic is "undeniable, unavoidable, self-evident, or self explanatory. One cannot 'not' use it." The only question is whether we reason rightly.

 

The Nature of Logic: To understand the epistemological nature of language and thinking; to learn to define terms, to make distinctions, to rightly judge, and to validly deduce truth; to encourage systematic, disciplined, orderly, and precise thinking.

 

A Tool of Learning: To understand the logical aspects of language and develop analytical skills foundational to all other disciplines, linking the formal character of reasoning to all our studies.

 

True Knowledge: To analyze and justify our beliefs and opinions and acquire true knowledge; to proportion the degree of our beliefs in accord with the grounds we have for their acceptance.

 

Our Reasonable Service: To learn to love God, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, to reason together with Him, to plead our cause before His throne, to prove what is good, and to rightly divide the word of truth.

 

Apologetics: To develop confidence in the inherent reasonableness of our faith that we might contend earnestly and honestly for it, countering destructive ideologies, "destroy[ing] speculations . . . raised up against the knowledge of God," and offering a well-reasoned defense for the hope that is in us.

 

Evangelism: To replace truth and reasonableness at the center of the gospel rather than felt need and fulfillment; to develop the intellectual categories necessary to forge connections between Christianity and culture.

 

Worship and Fellowship: To restore reason to its rightful role of informing our Christian walk and worship and enriching our friendships and fellowship.

 

Intellectual Virtue: To cultivate intellectual virtue, to nurture an ordered soul, to foster an honesty that squarely faces difficult questions, and to form a habit of wanting the truth.

 

Intellectual Tradition: To enter the Great Conversation and "come to terms" with those authors educated within the classical tradition, to connect with their way of thinking and understand the ideas it spawned. And, following in the footsteps of that same tradition, to lay a foundation for the study of classical rhetoric, the capstone of the liberal arts.

 

 

Tina in Ouray, CO

WOW. Just wow. I'll be sharing this. Thank you so much TT for saving and sharing. This is great!

[TeaTotaler]

Thanks. I'm afraid folks will think I'm crazy for saving old posts. I do miss Tina and many others from the old boards.

 

TT: I would like to officially hand the YOU ROCK award to you today :) Thank you so much. I'm saving this thread now! I look forward to the other post!

[Jane in NC]

Thanks. I'm afraid folks will think I'm crazy for saving old posts. I do miss Tina and many others from the old boards.

 

Far from crazy, I think you are WISE. Tina has been, in my opinion, articulate and expansive in her commentaries on logic curricula. Now let's tag these posts for easy future reference.

[cjbeach]

RE: Saving great threads

Peeking over from k-8 boards to say I already have MULTIPLE google docs of great posts... Jane in NC I have your Math posts, especially Dolciani Algebra, in documents. And so many other as well. SUCH a wealth of information this board is.

In one forum I belong to there is a "Best of the Best" sticky... wish there was something like that here\, but I do see in the SEARCH bubble cloud: Nan, Lori D, Jane.

I noted names in the search cloud, clicked, scanned posts, and made google docs for future reference. Doing same with this thread now :)

Thank you, all of you!

[FloridaLisa]

You are not crazy. I have some of those old posts saved as well. I'd love to hear from her, Kathleen, and LaJuana like we did in the old days! (And Lene now and then . . . :o) ).

 

Lisa

[Denise in IN]

V, I'm so glad you saved these! There are tons of threads I wish I had saved from the old board, now they've *poofed* into cyberspace.

 

Thanks for taking the time to copy them here.

[Peela]

Lol, my 13yo is now an almost 16yo!

And we did quit formal logic, and continued in informal logic.

 

Formal logic sounds great in theory and it is inspiring to hear and read the benefits. In practice, it's heavy going. Its where our "rubber hit the road" as far as "classical" education went, and we did not continue that road.