Six Reasons Your Child Should Learn Logic

In Star Trek, there's the purely logical guy, Mr. Spock, and the purely emotional guy, who is just about any other character. Real life isn't like that--we need to be able to function both ways, with our minds and with our emotions.

If you don't work on it, you may never develop the skill of logical thinking. But you need to have this skill, to identify logic traps.

Instead of just going with the flow, you can be proactive and teach logic to your child. In the process, you may get some practice at it too. Here's why:

1. Your child will be able to understand cause and effect, and make better life choices. For instance, a child who understands logical consequences will be more able to counter the voices of "friends" who urge him to misuse his money and his time.

2. Your child will learn to tackle problems. Solving problems systematically involves considering a list of options. This your help your child deal with life problems as he becomes an adult--for example what to do if the sink plugs up or the car breaks down.

3. In a media culture, your child will be better equipped to evaluate advertising. He will be able to identify circular reasoning fallacies, for example. Such a fallacy would be in the advertising slogan "Happy people buy Sloan's coffee." What the advertiser is actually saying is, "Buy Sloan's coffee, and you'll be happy." Can your child identify circular logic like this?

4. Your child will be able to evaluate generalizations made in the media. Perhaps he sees a reporter interviewing five people about illegal immigration. All five think illegal immigrants should be given amnesty. Then the reporter announces that everyone thinks illegal immigrants should get amnesty. But that's another logic error--generalizing from too small a sample group. Does your child see this error?

5. Your child can learn to evaluate advice on the basis of the qualifications of the person doing the advising. If your dentist tells you to floss your teeth, you will believe him -- he's an expert. But if he tells you to put an oil additive in your car, you need to weigh the advice because he's not an expert there.

6. Your child will be able to understand how computers think. Computers think in nitty-gritty ways: if statement A is true, then do action B. Otherwise, do action C. Our brains tend to skip around in comparison. But learning to program a computer to follow a logical sequence helps the child learn to think logically, too. In the Information Age, this is a very useful skill to develop, now or later. The more your child knows about computers, the more he will be master of that device that is mastering our lives.

Article Source: http://www.search4allinfo.com

Find out about computer programming for children and teens and get a free e-book on Web searching, the Internet Scavenger Hunt. Phyllis Wheeler provides curriculums for those who want to instruct their children and teens fun computer skills.

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