Logic and illogic in education
By Jon Rappoport
In two of my collections, The Matrix Revealed and Power
Outside The Matrix, I include training in the art of logic and critical
analysis.
The basic fact is: students in schools are rarely taught how
to follow a line of reasoning from beginning to end. Nor do they
practice analyzing half-formed, specious reasoning.
Who teaches young students, these days, how to distinguish between a polemic and a formal argument?
Teachers spend little or no time discussing hidden premises or assumptions, which color subsequent arguments.
Increasingly, people are "learning" from watching videos.
Some videos are well done; many others intentionally omit vital data and
make inferences based on "shocking images."
A focused study of logic can illuminate a range of subjects
and disciplines. It can suddenly bring perspective to fields of inquiry
that were formerly mysterious and impenetrable.
Logic is the parent of knowledge. It contains the principles and methods common to all investigation.
Being able to spot and understand logical flaws and fallacies
embedded in an article, essay, book immediately lifts the intelligence
level.
Logic isn't a prison; one isn't forced to obey its rules. But
the ability to deploy it, versus not understanding what it is, is like
the difference between randomly hammering at a keyboard and typing
coherent paragraphs. It's the difference between, "I agree with what
he's writing," and "I know exactly how he's making his argument."
In the West, the tradition of logic was codified by
Aristotle. Before him, Plato, in the Socratic Dialogues, employed it to
confound Socrates' opponents.
Reading the Dialogues today, one can see, transparently,
where Plato's Socrates made questionable assumptions, which he then
successfully foisted on those opponents. It's quite instructive to go
back and chart Socrates' clever steps. You see logic and illogic at
work.
High schools today don't teach logic for two reasons. The
teachers don't understand the subject, and logic as a separate
discipline has been deleted because students, armed with it, would
become authentically independent. The goal of education rejects
independent minds, despite assurances to the contrary.
Logic and critical analysis should be taught in phases, with
each phase encompassing more complex passages of text offered for
scrutiny.
Eventually, students would delve into thorny circumstantial
arguments, which make up a great deal of modern investigation and
research, and which need to be assessed on the basis of degrees of
probable validity and truth.
It's like a climbing a mountain. The lower paths are
relatively easy, if the map is clear. At higher elevation, more elements
come into play, and a greater degree of skill and experience is
required.
My college logic teacher introduced his subject to the class
this way: Once you've finished this semester, you'll know when you know,
and you'll know when you don't know.
The second part of his statement has great value. It enables
real research beyond egotistical concerns, beyond self-serving
presumptions, beyond secretly assuming what you're pretending to prove.
We certainly don't live in an age of reason; far from it.
Therefore, the greater need to learn logic. Among other benefits, it
centers the thinking process.
In a landscape of controversy, babble, bluster, public
relations, covert propaganda, and outright lying, one has a dependable
compass.
For instance, understanding the scientific method
(hypothesis-prediction-verification) would go a long way toward
untangling some of the outrageous claims of science, and separating them
from the political agendas they serve.
Beginning in ancient Greece, coming up through the Middle
Ages, and into the 19th century, logic was one aspect of education
called the Trivium ("the three"): in sequence, a student learned
grammar, then logic, then rhetoric.
Except in scattered places, where people have consciously
instituted a revival of the Trivium, that integrated method of teaching
is gone now.
Instead, in primary and middle schools, we have superficial
coasting through many academic subjects, minus the necessary exercises
and drills to ensure that students grasp material. In other words, we
have imposed ADHD.
Logic isn't the end-all and be-all of life. It doesn't define
what life is. It's a tool. You either have it or you don't. You can use
it or you can't. When you can, you have more power, and whole new
vistas, previously unseen, open up to you.
Logic is a tool in your box. When you need to go in and remove it and use it, is it dull or is it sharp?
Finally, studying logic gives a student an appreciation of
consequences. For example, a politician announces a high-flying
generalization, as a plank of his platform. Two things ought to follow.
The student does his best to translate that generality into specific
terms which actually mean something. Then he traces what would happen if
the plank were, in fact, put into effect; what would the consequences
specifically entail? There are always consequences---it's just that most
people never see them or think about them, because they haven't the
foggiest idea about how to flesh them out and map their implications.
Logic: one of the great contributions to civilization, left to die on the vine.
It needs to be resurrected, in full flower.
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