7th grade logic??

[HollyDay]

I still havent nailed this one down yet. I am completely in the dark. Could someone give me a list of options for 7th grade? Thanks!!!

 

Sorry guys!! New computer and I still havent gotten the hang of it!!!!!

[SheilaZ]

No idea. That's the last thing on my shoping list also.

DS 1 has done all the mindbenders and he's ready for something new.

I'm hoping someone else jumps in with some guidance.

[Quiver0f10]

We use the Fallacy Detective in 7th.

[Lori D.]

Below are options for Logic for 7th and 8th grades. My personal opinion is to hold off on a formal logic program (such as Logic by James Nance, or Introductory Logic by Douglas Wilson) to allow the student's brain to really develop those logic areas. We found that using the intro to logic books below, coupled with various critical thinking books below, really prepared our students for a more formal Logic course for 9th grade. Just my opinion! Hope something here is of help. Warmly, Lori D.

 

 

 

intro to logic books:

- Orbiting with Logic (from the Dandylion logic series)

- Art of Argument (Larson/Hodge)

- Fallacy Detective (Bluedorn)

- Thinking Toolbox (Bluedorn)

 

 

critical thinking books (helps continue development of logic/problem solving skills):

- Mindbenders series

- Perplexors (like Mindbenders)

- Think-a-Grams -- pub. by Critical Thinking Press (visual word/phrase puzzles; ex: "mil1lion" = "one in a million")

- Word Winks; More Word Winks (like Think-A-Grams) -- pub. by Mindware

- Plexors, More Plexers (like Think-A-Grams) -- by Seymour

- Critical Thinking Activities in Pattern, Image, Logic (gr. 7-12) -- by Seymour

- 10-Minute Critical-Thinking Activities for Englishy (gr. 5-12) -- by Eaton; Walch Pub.

- 10-Minute Critical-Thinking Activities for Algebra (gr. 9-12) -- by Martin; Walch Pub.

 

 

software:

- Logic Journey of the Zoombinis (by grade level)

- Revenge of the Logic Spiders (by grade level)

 

 

games:

- Checkers

- Chess

- Boggle

- Scrabble

- Set

- Quarto

- Tetrus

- Risk

- other strategy computer/board games

 

 

puzzle pages:

- crosswords, word jumbles, anagrams

- codes, cryptograms

- sudoku puzzles

 

 

solving "whodunnits":

 

mystery/detective books

- minute mystery books by Conrad, Sobol, Weber, and others

 

- detective TV series

(older PBS series on DVD: Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, Miss Marple, etc.)

("Foyles War" = set in Britain's homefront during WW2, so added bonus of history)

("Numb3rs" = cases solved by a math genius, so added bonus of interesting math tidbits)

[senunk]

We haven't done logic here and my dd will be starting 7th grade. I just ordered The Art of Argument based on some posts I read here. It looks like a good starting point for us. I hope to use Traditional Logic for 8th.

[Shelly in IL]

liked both of those. This year (7th) I am going to use the Reading Detective. Check it out - I think it will be very good to help their thinking skills for testing, etc...

[senunk]

liked both of those. This year (7th) I am going to use the Reading Detective. Check it out - I think it will be very good to help their thinking skills for testing, etc...

Oh, we used these last year. My kids loved them!

[angela in ohio]

We did Mindbenders up to sixth grade, then Fallacy Detective and Thinking Toolbox for sixth, and now will do Intro. to Logic for seventh. Art of Arguent looks really good, though, too.

[Myrtle]

We'll be using Patrick Suppes First Course in Mathematical Logic next year. It has a whole lot of what is covered in a normal logic course such as rules and inference, truth and validity, but by the end of the book it has worked the student up to doing real proofs in math on topics and concepts in arithmetic that a junior high student would be familiar with. (They are not sophisticated proofs) Informal fallacies are not covered.

 

You can look at many sample pages at this link which takes you to google books.

 

What looks so promising about this book is that it begins with natural language and ends with symbols. One of the more difficult pedogogical issues in logic and philosophy seems to be how to get someone to translate common English into formal logical sentences and this book seems to help someone down that road and is one of the few that I have found that is accessible by a younger student.

[sleepy]

We'll be using Patrick Suppes First Course in Mathematical Logic next year. It has a whole lot of what is covered in a normal logic course such as rules and inference, truth and validity, but by the end of the book it has worked the student up to doing real proofs in math on topics and concepts in arithmetic that a junior high student would be familiar with. (They are not sophisticated proofs) Informal fallacies are not covered.

 

You can look at many sample pages at this link which takes you to google books.

 

What looks so promising about this book is that it begins with natural language and ends with symbols. One of the more difficult pedogogical issues in logic and philosophy seems to be how to get someone to translate common English into formal logical sentences and this book seems to help someone down that road and is one of the few that I have found that is accessible by a younger student.

 

This book really looks promising, thanks for taking the time to post! :001_smile:

[Suzanne in ABQ]

My 12yodd will be doing The Art of Argument, from the Logic for Children publisher, Classical Academic Press. It uses advertisements and dialogues to illustrate informal fallacies. My dd is looking forward to starting it.

 

She did some Mindbenders in the past.

[Spy Car]

What happened to my post???

[Guest carolstead]

We used Mind Benders and Building Thinking Skills book 3. Also, Red Herring in the car for long rides. The site to get these and other critical thinking products is www.brightmindsforkids.com.

 

Sincerely,

 

Carol

[Spy Car]

All I can say is be very very careful when looking for a "Logic" program as most of the children's programs have a theological axe to grind.

 

The very first lesson of Douglas Wilson's "Introductory Logic" asks if questions such as the following are "truth statements":

 

"The Bible is the word of God".

 

And they expect an answer in the affirmative.

 

Now someone may believe (or disbelieve) that the Bible is the "word of God" but such statements are not provable (or disprovable) by the laws of science, of which Logic is one branch. It is a distortion and perversion of the science of Logic to undermine its foundation with such examples. Such examples do not belong in a Logic program, unless it is pointed to as a statement that falls into the category of "scientifically unprovable".

 

Likewise:

 

The Qu'ran is the word of God...is NOT statement that can be proved true or false using Logic. These are theological questions that are beyond Logic.

 

Also, one of the elementary school aged Logic books (I forgot no which one) drags the abortion issue into early lessons in a very age inappropriate way.

 

Good luck, and if you find a program that actually teaches Logic, rather than pushing a particular religious perspective or engaging in "cultural warfare", I hope you'll let us know.

 

Bill

[Fourmother]

All I can say is be very very careful when looking for a "Logic" program as most of the children's programs have a theological axe to grind.

 

I've been following this thread with interest. My concern about logic texts tends to echo what you have said here. Spy Car and others, once you get beyond the Critical Thinking type books, are there any good and "secular" logic curricula out there?

[Myrtle]

I still havent nailed this one down yet. I am completely in the dark. Could someone give me a list of options for 7th grade? Thanks!!!

 

Sorry guys!! New computer and I still havent gotten the hang of it!!!!!

 

All I can say is be very very careful when looking for a "Logic" program as most of the children's programs have a theological axe to grind.

 

The very first lesson of Douglas Wilson's "Introductory Logic" asks if questions such as the following are "truth statements":

 

"The Bible is the word of God".

 

And they expect an answer in the affirmative.

 

Now someone may believe (or disbelieve) that the Bible is the "word of God" but such statements are not provable (or disprovable) by the laws of science, of which Logic is one branch. It is a distortion and perversion of the science of Logic to undermine its foundation with such examples. Such examples do not belong in a Logic program, unless it is pointed to as a statement that falls into the category of "scientifically unprovable".

 

Likewise:

 

 

 

Also, one of the elementary school aged Logic books (I forgot no which one) drags the abortion issue into early lessons in a very age inappropriate way.

 

Good luck, and if you find a program that actually teaches Logic, rather than pushing a particular religious perspective or engaging in "cultural warfare", I hope you'll let us know.

 

Bill

 

"Such examples do not belong in a Logic program, unless it is pointed to as a statement that falls into the category of "scientifically unprovable"

 

Neither science nor religion belong in a logic class. You don't use logic to prove scientific facts you use empircal evidence to prove scientific assertions. Of course we all use logic to derive a priori results that might be very related to either science or religion.

 

Religion has every bit as much of a claim in your logic class as science does but more accurately neither has any place since both religion and science are a posteriori (In fact, some religionists think that religion is a priori and in that sense it would have more of a place in a logic course than science.)

 

If we apply the condition of "scientifically provable" to the premises which must be used in a logic course then math itself would be left out. Assertions in math are not proved via the scientific method and "science" because math is a priori.

 

I am not a religious person, but neither am I some sort of secular positivist. Ironically, it would seem that even in our acceptance of a definition of what it means for something to be true or false we can not escape cultural warfare:

 

Here is how the reliance of science is characterized by a site on atheism and agnosticism: This definition of empiricism:

 

This is a philosophical position which maintains that our knowledge and concepts are wholly based upon our personal experiences. More specifically, empiricism is an epistemological theory which argues that that all knowledge must be acquired a posteriori and that nothing can be known a priori.

 

Another way of putting it is that empiricism denies the existence of purely intellectual knowledge and argues that only sense-knowledge can exist.

 

Most atheists incorporate empiricism in some form in their outlook on reality.

"

 

If one were uninformed in such matters one might assume a false dichotomy of religion/science exists.

 

It is not that there is anything "wrong" with science, it is what it is. However, to the surprise of many modern empiricists there is an alternative to both "faith" and "science" as the means to justified true belief, and that is rationalism. And as it turns out it is rationalism that is the basis of Western thought via Plato's Academy. As Whitehead said, "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. "

 

 

To be frank, empiricists and postivists are going to be very unhappy with the low priority that science, a practical field, plays in a classical education which has always exalted philosophy, logic, and the humanities due to a reliance on rationalism and the fact that a classical education has almost by definition been about "paideia" (rather than mechanical trades and skills which is the outcome of an education base in science) and it was in fact, the rise of the emphasis on empiricism a way of acquiring knowledge and the result of an emphasis on the practical scientific education which brought about the downfall of classical education beginning about the middle of the 19th century onwards. Science and modern languages are the alternative to classical education. (See Diane Ravitch's Century of Failed School Reforms and Tracy Lee Simmon's Climbing Parnassus)

 

Kant (recommended reading in Well Trained Mind) is in direct contradistinction to the empiricism of Hume.

 

Lest we be too dismissive of the role of logic in Islam, the influence of rationalism can be seen on Islamic theological considerations. It isn't necessarily just about some sort of theological axe to grind, but ultimately about figuring out vexing open issues.

 

PS. I still think Cothran is wrong about his overemphasis of Aristotelian logic. (cough cough, for those who know what I'm talking about) and falsely identifies modern logic with science in general rather than with rationalism.

 

The connection between the cultural war, science, logic, and religion

 

Modern logic was in fact developed by positivists like Bertrand Russell in the hopes that he could in some profound sense show that math is really just an extension of logic and even if he failed Hilbert was right behind him saying that math was formalizable and that all the results of math could be formally derived based on a relatively small set of consistent axioms. (Remembering that axioms are not "scientifically proved" they are simply accepted, you are more than welcome to not accept them, just like you don't have to accept the rules of poker, but then you will be playing some other game and not poker) Had either of these projects worked out, essentially that would have closed math off from philosophy and set up mathematics and physics and the rest of the natural sciences as a complete alternative to philosophy or religion. This goal was called "logicism" and Hilbert's objective was known as "formalism" but it was all debunked by the landmark nuclear explosion of a paper in 1931 by Goedel's incompleteness theorem.

 

So while Goedel's incompleteness theorem does not prove the existence of free will, or inherent uncertainty in the universe, global warming, or any other of the infinitude of assertions made in debates on the internet, it did radically change the direction of modern logic by showing that math is not closed off from philosophy and that these a priori considerations in philosophy, NOT the empirical ones in science, are the basis for doing anything else related to knowledge of any sort.

 

Did anyone actually make it this far reading?

 

And now straying yet further afield, "that is what broke baby bird's blue balloon", or in other words, why we are rationalists and handle our math education philosophically as opposed to technical training, (which is the theme of my blog), why we like classical education, and why we embrace modern logic.

[Spy Car]

Ironically, it would seem that even in our acceptance of a definition of what it means for something to be true or false we can not escape cultural warfare

 

For a "beginning" course in Logic I would hope some "truth" statements could be posed that would not incite cultural warfare, while admitting one trained in philosophy might be able to poke holes in how we understand "truth".

 

Do you accept that "The Bible is the word of God" (true or false?) is a reasonable exemplar of a "truth statement"?

 

If not, can you think of a better example for teaching the concept in beginning Logic?

 

Lest we be too dismissive of the role of logic in Islam, the influence of rationalism can be seen on Islamic theological considerations. It isn't necessarily just about some sort of theological axe to grind, but ultimately about figuring out vexing open issues.

 

 

 

I certainly hope you did not take my point to be that Islam is illogical or that I'm included in the collective "we" who are "dismissive of the role of logic in Islam" or of the role of logic of Christianity for that matter. I just think ""The Qur'an is the word of God" would be an equally usefulness example of a truth statement in a beginning Logic course as the afore-mentioned.

 

Did anyone actually make it this far reading?

 

Yes...I did...several times. And I'm not entirely sure of the point you are trying to make, although the fault may be entirely my own.

 

We should talk about MS!

 

Bill