I teach formal logic to middle schoolers. This comes as a surprise to many people since formal logic is usually first encountered at college (if it is encountered at all). However, the more I teach logic, the more convinced I am that we should be teaching formal logic to our children especially during the middle school years. Not everyone agrees with me. Some suggest that formal logic is much too advanced for children of this age. Others suggest that logic is only important for certain subjects and not necessary for everyone to learn. Let’s start with the latter objection: why should everyone learn formal logic? Surely logic is useful for…
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What is the Nature of Christian Classical Education?
Christian classical education is on the rise in the United States. But what is it? In what follows, I will attempt a sketch of the context of our present educational project, the assumptions of education in the classical period, and how such assumptions fit with a Christian educational model. I hope to demonstrate that a Christian classical school begins with a starting point not only in the hopes of a parent, but the reality of God’s creation and his intentions for our lives lived within it. A Reaction to Pragmatism Perhaps the best way at this topic is a brief sketch of educational theory that removed any vestiges of the…
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The Bottle-Kicker: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Beginners
Here is a kind of statement: If A, then C. The statement is called a hypothetical statement and it has two parts joined together by “if…,then…” In the statement above, A is called the Antecedent and C is called the Consequent. We use these kinds of statements all the time: “If I don’t get a move on, I’m going to be late” “If there’s milk in the fridge, then you can have it.” The antecedent is sometimes called the sufficient condition and the consequent is sometimes called the necessary condition. So, how does this kind of statement work in arguments and how can we understand what the difference between those…
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For the Love of Dot: On Being An Intellectual Capitalist
Civilization is, in large part, indebted to its elders who built a vast mountain of intellectual and practical capital. We all rely on it to some degree. In my studies I am utterly indebted to previous work. And there is a ton of it. Though I have only scratched the surface I am aware of the vast capital of those who went before me. I could barely utter a coherent thought if it wasn’t for the hard work of thinkers who blazed the trail. And none of them did it without start up funds from their teachers. The trouble with capital is that you can quickly run out. Dorthy Sayers…
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Education: A Treadmill and a Trail Run
For some, education is like running on a treadmill. It is a measurable project, a process, the forming of a rational person, an equipping for industry, an economic machine, a societal organizer. Others see education as a trail run. It is a narrative, a life forming cultural story, an experience about what it is to be in the world, a discovery of passion, of love, of wonder. Most of us think education includes both. We want our children to learn form, to have trained minds, ready for work. And, at the same time, we want them to experience life, to live out a meaningful existence. But let’s face it, we…
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Postmodern Integration part 2
As you might have noticed, I have been attempting to explore answers to a perennial question – how the Christian faith is integrated with learning. My interest is sparked not only by the fact that I have children who presently attend a Christian school, but also because of my own experience (okay, and it’s also my MA thesis). In some ways I am seeking to understand what I think to be true in principle – that there is nothing that is not under the sovereign rule of God and that includes every avenue of learning possible – math, science, literature, philosophy etc. Today I want to look at a postmodern…
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Postmodern Integration
Christian education, despite growing in the United States, continues to struggle to find its place among the largely secular educational environment. Lanney Mayer suggests that Western education provides an inhospitable home for theology under the “hegemony of naturalistic disciplines.” Religious education has either moved to the margins or evolved to suit empirical studies. Mayer suggests that the now widely disseminated postmodern critique of modern methods of knowing–that the mind does not mirror reality, but always brings to bear presuppositions of language, culture and politics–can help faith-learning integration. According to Mayer, between the two extremes–modernist objectivism and postmodern constructivism–lies the role of faith. Faith, for Mayer, is the human way of…
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Science and Religion: Dembski’s Proposal
Ian Barbour has died. He was 90. Barbour’s life was spent attempting to solve one important problem – how science and religion relate to one another. He wrote: If science and religion were totally independent, the possibility of conflict would be avoided, but the possibility of constructive dialogue and mutual enrichment would also be ruled out. We do not experience life as neatly divided into separate compartments; we experience it in wholeness and interconnectedness before we develop particular disciplines to study different aspects of it. There are also biblical grounds for the conviction that God is Lord of our total lives and of nature, rather than of a separate ‘religious’…
