What? How can someone who loves The Well Trained Mind be saying such a thing! Well, it’s true. When you open up the floodgates to learning logic, there’s no going back.
I should say, I love logic. I seriously get excited when it is time to sit down together and do Care Bear’s logic lesson together. With that said, after you start learning all the informal fallacies, you see them everywhere! I was already thrilled I didn’t have my eyes littered with political ads on TV since we don’t have a TV signal in our home (though, Mitt Romney had ads on Words With Friends… seriously? Gr.), but I’m exponentially glad that I didn’t learn logic, then see those ads. You wouldn’t want to sit at the same dinner table with me, let me tell you! What about our friends or family who try to convince us their way is better? And arguments we may have with others and they use the distraction technique to get us away from our (hopefully) very valid point?
Logic has ruined me from giving validation to arguments of others because it is extremely common for people to use logical fallacies for everyday points. I honestly am starting to believe that constructing a fully logical argument these days is a rarity we can not count on. It’s easy to see why logic is not recognized or valued when we view the media’s portrayal of a convincing argument. Yes, the advertisements we are surrounded by are a big perpetrator, but even the news doesn’t always live up to giving a full and complete argument that can bring us to a reasonable, logical conclusion.
I’m not saying everyone needs to be philosophers, but I do hope that more people start learning the art of logic so we can save some dignity. Are we really going to stop a vote on a valid law because the person who brought it forward did something less than dignified 15 years ago (general example… this doesn’t relate to a current issue)? Let’s be real… logical!
I like this because we haven’t started our logic portion of the curriculum yet. It’s out first year homeschooling and it was difficult to cram everything in while we were still finding our niche. I decided that ‘The Fallacy Detective’ was the least essential and that we’d start it up later in the year once I knew her core subjects were under control. This has me excited to start it up!
We looked at The Fallacy Detective, too! Hopefully the kids are as excited as you are to start logic. 🙂 I definitely understand having to prioritize what we can get done and holding off on something until we can dedicate the time to it.