This logic course will both challenge and inspire high school
students to be able to defend their faith against atheists and skeptics
alike.
Welcome to the world of logic. This logic
course will both challenge and inspire high school students to be able
to defend their faith against atheists and skeptics alike.
Because learning logical terms and principles is often like learning a
foreign language, the course has been developed to help students of
logic learn the practical understanding of logical arguments. To make
the course content easier to grasp, the schedule provides worksheets and
practice sheets to help students better recognize logical fallacies, as
well as review weeks for the quizzes and the final. The practice sheets
in the back of the book offer practical study for both the final exam
and for actual arguments you might encounter online or in the media. The
practice sheets used in review before the end of the course come from
all of the chapters and help students prepare for the final exam.
Another way to help understand and memorize new terms is by creating
flash cards or memorization cards. It should be noted that this is a
part of nearly every week of study on the schedule provided. As new
concepts are added each week, it is suggested that this review time grow
to allow review of older concepts and the addition of the new terms.
Students can make their own flashcards on 3 x 5 cards (the term on one
side and the definition on the other), or they might find a flashcard
app that can be used from a phone or computer.
Logic is the study of the way God thinks. So, by studying logic, you
are actually doing theology! This is a great point to emphasize for
students who fancy themselves theologians, but are not terribly excited
about logic. Students planning on going into ministry better learn
something about the mind of the God they serve. Students of science
better learn something about God’s mind since it is God’s mind that
controls every atom in the universe. Knowing how their Creator thinks
will give them an edge over secular students. Emphasize how awesome it
is that we are learning about God’s mind! It would be wonderful to learn
how Leonardo da Vinci’s mind worked, or Albert Einstein’s. How much
more awesome to learn about the mind of God!
Studies have shown that students learn far more effectively and
retain information better if they are exposed to it in short bursts over
a long period of time rather than in a long burst of short duration.
The student who studies a topic for 40 hours in one week will not retain
it nearly as well in longterm memory as a student who studies for a
total of 40 hours spread out over two months. For this reason, it is
helpful to occasionally ask the student to recall information learned in
previous chapters. This reinforces the topic, helps with memorization,
and may help the student to think about the older material in light of
the newer material. For these reasons and more, we stop and review
fallacies covered in previous chapters.
