how to teach deductive reasoning?

[left is right]

Another thread this morning discussed Dems and deductive reason/Repubs and inductive reason. I didn’t want to take any focus off that so I thought I would start a new thread.
It is important to me as a grandmother of a bright little boy that will be running for President in 2044 (we would appreciate your vote, thank-you) that he is an independent thinker. How do you teach thinking skills to a toddler? How do you continue such teachings through out the rest of his life? All suggestions will be considered.

[sakabatou]

1. Teach them the scientific method

Should be a bit easier to grasp.

[Skidmore]

2. That used to be the center of liberal arts/studies programs until

some benighted RW demagogues decided to paint that term broadly in with mud.

[Recursion]

29. Well, the academic left and right both had their go at it

On our side, logic classes felt too much like the province of dead white male authors and so philosophy programs gradually merged with litcrit into an unrecognizable mass. I guarantee you a graduate of, say, Thomas Aquinas has a pretty good grasp of logic, if nothing else.

[damntexdem]

3. Both deductive and inductive reasoning are critical.

[snagglepuss]

4. Teach him empathy so he has an ablity to see the world from someelse's point of view.

BTW you sound like a great grandmom:)

[eleny]

5. Maybe just keeping reinforcing the notion of finding out the facts first before deciding something

But, you know, putting it in kid's language. We didn't have kids so I'm not sure how to go about it. Maybe by example. Grandma figures out what happened before deciding the why of situations.

Hubby and I often discuss what to do about situations and return to our house rule very often - "fact find first".

Seems to me that learning to be patient is a key to this. That's a tough one since so many of us are Type A personalities these days. It helps that I'm married to a Type B kind of guy.

Good luck to you, kewl granny!

[Recursion]

28. Isn't that the opposite of deduction? (nt)

[eleny]

33. Isn't getting the facts first and making a decision the process of deduction?

[Recursion]

35. No, deduction is reasoning from principles rather than facts

Prior rather than posterior analytics.

[eleny]

36. So the process that I'm describing comes after you develop the principles

Seems like they would go together to develop deductive reasoning.

Btw, thanks for stepping in to help me. I hope I get this figured out.

[patrice]

6. Montessori methods are good because they are concrete. & I can't support enough a

suggestion further up this thread to study Scientific methodology as early as possible, with a goal to understand the basic philosophical assumptions of empirical science and apply them to its methods. Rational (Scientific) empiricism is the foundation of what we refer to as knowledge and one of the reasons for understanding it is not only to recognize the relevance of "the facts", but also to have a sense of its limitations (i.e. that about which Science does NOT speak, e.g. things such as what we call Art), because that other kind of "knowledge" can be important/significant too.

Another area that is useful to older students is Linguistics (and its logical fundaments in Grammar). All of us use language all of the time for almost everything (ask an attorney sometime about the importance of words), yet few of us stop and think about what language actually is. Noam Chomsky has a lot to say about this, but you will find it in Literature too, especially amongst the post-modern groups, such as the Existentialists and the Absurdists.

Good Luck with that little guy!! I ENVY you. :hi:

[patrice]

10. There are many research data-bases, such as Psyc-Lit & Psyc Info, but you can also just go

to the library and ask for a set of research abstracts in any discipline that you are interested in. Psyc-Lit/Info are just the digitized form of those abstracts.

The abstracts are nice because they give you a quick overview of a particular piece of research, all organized by topic, you can then look up the publications and read the actual stuff and compare it to the principles of scientific methodologies.

Another VERY useful resource, online, is Questia. Haven't been there for a while but it has many wonderful tools for research including vast full-text holdings that you can query by topic.

[patrice]

14. At some point it is invaluable to get him to design his own research. nt

[patrice]

17. This can be as simple as: 1. Ask a question 2.Decide on something to count 3.Count it. nt

[patrice]

19. I forgot: 4. Publish (i.e. discuss). nt

[ZombieHorde]

7. Teach him how to play Go Fish.

"If someone asks for jacks, they probably have one or two jacks."

This should be a simple way to start.

[blondeatlast]

9. That's a beautifully simple idea. nt

[patrice]

13. Game playing is AMAZING. I have a nephew in at-risk education who is getting huge results

with game playing. He's been at it for about 10 years now. He's a techie too, so he never lacks for notice of the things he does. He collects all kinds of games and doesn't use the computer games very much at all. Prefers card games and board games.

You should see him with the mob of young hooligans in our family!!! All sitting quietly discussing and figuring situations out. They LOVE experiencing respect.

[cbdo2007]

8. Give them problems to solve with different options and outcomes.

Even if you teach it though doesn't mean they will learn it. People react and learn differently. Neither of my parents have good deductive reasoning at all yet I'm an expert at it. Go figure.

[seabeyond]

11. when they are so little, i brought up different questions when they made a statement

that made them have to think about and decide. we alway talked about all issues and look at all sides, RESPECTFULLY. i told them if they cannot argue something respectfully, they have lost. also, when they got old enough to parrot what i told them, or come to a conclusion that i knew was copycat of me, i told them, not allowed. that they were not allowed to parrot. that they must gather info, think about, and draw their own conclusion. have the ability to argue their point.

to do this we will take any conversation and discuss it from all sides. we may not draw the same conclusions and that is ok. it always ends with appreciate the conversation. never a forceful enforcing one point of views. all sides are listened to.

for years we have been listening to npr in the car. the car is an excellent place for conversation and npr brings up lots of subjects, different points of view

we have lots of reading material in the house

i subscribe to three magazines and leave on dining room table for all to read and we often discuss that

every night monday thru fri we have dinner at the table,a s a family and it is a time of discussion. whatever subject one wants to discuss

[Cleita]

12. When I was in school and had to take a logic class,

our teacher made us go through ads in magazines and those that we saw on TV or heard on the radio to pick out the fallacies in reasoning. Every single one of them had either false premises or false choices that made the outcome false. For instance there was an ad at that time for Colgate toothpaste that claimed the reason some loser in the ad didn't get dates was because he wasn't using their product and all that would change once he switched to Colgate.

[Recursion]

31. Finding the implicit premises is a great exercise

eg,
E: no non-Colgate-user is a date-getter
I: S is a non-Colgate-user
O: S is not a date-getter

The syllogism checks out, but the implied premise (which usually is the major premise, in ads) is obviously false.

[BanzaiBonnie]

15. Before there were therapists there were grandmothers

[Zorra]

16. Here's an option:

Sherlock Holmes: The Skill That Made Him Famous!

Deductive reasoning is one of the most valuable skills a student can have when working to prove a mathematical theorem, analyzing literature, or taking a standardized test. Deductive reasoning is what allows a student to discover the correct answer to a question he or she may not have been anticipating. At its most basic level, it is simply applying larger truths and over-arching facts to smaller questions to arrive at the logical answers.

Deductive reasoning is how theorems are proven in mathematics and how Sherlock Holmes was able to see through the shroud of mystery that always surrounded his cases. Deductive reasoning can be taught, but it is its regular practice that yields the benefits to students. The brain acts like a muscle and exercising it through logic, analysis, and critical thinking is what gives it the strength to question, to learn, and to discover.

When learning becomes a simple, repetitive pattern of memorization and multiple-choice test-taking, students' brains do not get many chances to grow and evolve. Students become like filing cabinets for facts and figures, rather than engaged participants in their own educations. Teaching deductive reasoning and exercising it regularly helps students see the patterns and underlying assumptions that govern all human knowledge.

The Critical Thinking Co. provides Mind Benders logic puzzles and riddles to educators and parents around the world. Available in books and on software, these products provide an entertaining and challenging way for students to exercise the fundamentals of reasoning and critical thinking. The Mind Benders programs are only a small part of the world of tools The Critical Thinking Co. has developed to capture students' imaginations and get them excited about learning.

http://www.criticalthinking.com/company/articles/deductive-reasoning-skills.jsp

Also, I believe language and intra-brain communication is key to deductive reasoning and suggest that you read to your grandson often and help him understand the meanings of words and concepts.

Also, I bet your grandson loves and admires you, because you are asking his question. Just by setting a personal example of using logic and deductive reasoning in all your interactions with him will help imprint deductive reasoning in his consciousness.

[Demeter]

18. You Have to Know What Kind of Brain Your Grandson Has

There are many different learning styles, and some are more suited for deductive reasoning, others for inductive, and the lucky can do both. The really unlucky can do neither.

Knowing his learning style will help a lot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles


(warning, I have not tried this site, but it came up)
http://www.ldpride.net/learningstyles.MI.htm


http://www2.gsu.edu/~dschjb/wwwmbti.html


Start the way the Greeks did, and don't forget Boolean algebra when he gets older: Venn diagrams help the spacial thinkers.

Refer to Heinlein's concept of "Fair Witness" as developed in his novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" for ways of encouraging everyday logic.

[patrice]

20. Personally, I think "learning style" can take too much importance away from other issues.

It might be good to use "learning style" as more of a spring board (or perhaps more like "a carrot"), but getting too exclusive with it results in kids who can't read, "because they are kinetic learners" or kids who can't do basic math, "because they are non-linear thinkers". There needs to be a balance.

I was seeing "learning style" used as a cop-out in lesson planning when I taught. EVERYTHING was supposed to be fun and teachers were rewarded socially, by students and parents and, hence, by administrations, for doing lots of "learning style" stuff. The notion of an external standard of somesort, what used to be called a discipline, is gone. I couldn't take the pressure for requiring homework and other forms of academic discipline OF SENIORS in my areas (English & Psychology), so I got out of education. Personally, I think the abuse of concepts such as "learning style" and "co-operative learning" are (ONLY) part of what has ruined public education.

[woo me with science]

24. Agreed. nt

[woo me with science]

25. This was interesting recently.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-poldrack/are-learning-styles-impor_b_398326.html

[patrice]

27. Good stuff there, thanks! "...confuse fluency (ease) for ability..." was something else that

I couldn't deal with. I realized that no one understood the difference between "could" and "did". That was particularly difficult for me, as I taught a lot of honors and AP.

AP at least we had the college board to establish results of my curriculum and most of my students did well on it, though I have to say that criteria for evaluation of the written portion of the Psychology college board, 1/3 of the overall score, were shockingly LOW. I attended some mock-up scoring sessions at Texas A&M and COULD NOT believe how they were scoring that stuff. Extremely low value placed on coherent writing was the norm. All students had to do to score well on the written portion (ONE THIRD of the overall score) was to remember to mention certain content relative to a question and use vocabulary words. There was a very very low threshold for whether the writing made sense. When I tried to teach my students to write to a model (because writing for the test is TIMED) based on Bloom's Taxonomy, everyone fought me. All of them wanted to free-write.

I didn't give up though; the whole thing forced me to develop and teach rubrics for everything and then spread-sheet ALL of it. I LOVED it if anyone ever asked me why a given grade became whatever it was, but almost no one ever did.

[Recursion]

32. I would never have learned to write if I had not worked for a marketing company

I thought I could write in college, and my essays went over well, but I had to re-learn the entire craft at a marketing job. 20 second radio spots were the worst (and so the best, from a learning standpoint). Free writing is wicked dangerous: if you ever find yourself not knowing what to say next, you've done something wrong.

[patrice]

34. Free writing has it's place too, but that Writing Process model also contains

Review/Evaluation, which most often takes the form of PEER review and is supposed to go through at least 2 iterations. But a lot of that is not happening and when review DOES occur it's more often than not a peer, so it's someone with a lot of the same skill-development issues as the author, not to mention all of the social stuff going on in a situation like that. And then all of that is going on with students with absolutely little or no comprehension of Grammar (I think because teachers don't understand it either, so they don't teach it, or worse yet damage their students' attitudes toward it by teaching it just mechanically).

I continue to run across post-secondary teachers who comment about how are overwhelmed they are by poor writers.

Think of what all of this MUST cost business in confusion and logistic/operations errors!

[patrice]

22. "what kind of a brain" CAN be (i.e. isn't necessarily, but probably is) an oversimplification.

[elleng]

21. Talk/discuss with them, + when apropos explain how you arrived at a conclusion,

VOILA, deductive reasoning.

Talk/discuss a lot, 'rules' not necessary. imo

[SheilaT]

23. Keep in mind that if he's a toddler

he's not yet ready to learn higher order thinking. That will come in time. Meanwhile, I agree with the Montessori endorsement. Beyond that, expose him to as many different learning experiences as possible. Foreign languages at an early age are nice, if that can be done. Make sure he interacts with as many different people from different backgrounds and cultures as possible. Model deductive and inductive reasoning every chance you get.

I noticed when my kids were very young that little children are natural scientists, and naturally make use of what's been formalized as the Scientific Method. Work with that. Help them observe, draw up hypotheses, "experiment" in appropriate ways, draw conclusions, and move on.

From what I've observed around me, I think that the widest possible variety of experiences is the key. If the only book you ever read is the Bible (just to name one example) you not only have a particular narrow view of the world, but you have absolutely no experience with long, sustained narrative, and so complex reasoning is difficult for such people. Do not try to rush this child into thinking that he's not ready for yet, but constantly make new things available to him.

What I like so much about Montessori (my younger one did it for a couple of years) is that it allows children to do tasks over and over again until they fully master them. It puts a very solid foundation in place before moving on.

[surrealAmerican]

26. When they are toddlers, you answer those million questions ...

... they ask. When you don't know the answer, you come up with a way to find one that involves the child. When the answer is unknowable, you share opinions. Just make sure you make clear the difference between facts and opinions.

As they get older, you ask them interesting questions.

[JuniperLea]

37. You can even use reference books...

Kids pick up very quickly that books hold answers to their questions.

My oldest asked millions of questions! Oh man... sometimes it was all I could do to calmly answer because he wore me the hell out! I answered every single question I could, and had him sit with me when I looked things up. He turned into a total bookworm... he now writes, proofs, and edits technical books!

[XemaSab]

38. Word

:)

[rug]

30. Statement by Republican.

Ergo, lie.

[XemaSab]

39. Get toys and books that teach the kid to be curious about the world

Get the kid a globe and an atlas, get the kid a magnifying glass and a pair of binoculars, help him plant and tend a garden, let him "help" you cook and talk to him about the different things in the food and where they come from, and take him on random outings to fun and educational places.

Get books of fairy tales, historical fiction, and science fiction. Get him books about dinosaurs and the planets and the birds. When he gets a little older, the Eyewitness books are great, and they will last him for a long time. Get him a good adult dictionary.

A curious mind is open to all things, and reasoning will follow from there.