School of Logic (7th-8th)

Junior High is a critical age in the life of a child.  Grammar students enter the School of Logic as old children and exit as young adults.  What happens in between is unique, exciting, and challenging for students, parents, and teachers alike:

• Safety Net: The School of Logic offers a safety net where mistakes can be forgiven and failures can be redeemed that won’t be there again once students enter the School of Rhetoric.
• From Concrete to Analytical: Student’s transition from more concrete thinking in the School of Grammar to more analytical thinking that questions, challenges, and tests what they are learning.
• Teaching by Discussing:  Teachers tailor their teaching method from a more formal didactic approach in the School of Grammar to a less formal Socratic approach that seeks to draw students into discussion, debate, and dialogue where their understanding is enlarged and their capacity for critical thought is developed as they learn to justify their beliefs.
• Joining the Great Conversation: As students add understanding to their knowledge, they begin to move from mere spectators to actual participants in the “great conversation” of the Western intellectual tradition.

The Logic state (7-8) helps students take mastered information from the Grammar stage and bring it into ordered relationships. Students begin to apply logic, accessing the validity of arguments and learning to view information critically with more discerning minds.

• Deepening their knowledge and relationship with God
• Becoming active self-learners and critical thinkers
• Mastering organization and time management skills
• Learning disciplined independent study habits
• Developing healthy friendships and peer relationships
• and learning how to think and debate critically and logically – skills they need in order to excel academically in high school and beyond!

During the dialectic stage the student’s capacity for formal reasoning develops. So why not stick the peg where it fits? This is the stage when learning facts is not enough. Questioning and arguing is commonplace, and often even a nuisance. Children reaching this age are eager to challenge ideas and exercise their newly developing reasoning abilities. Learning formal logic and the correct methods of reasoning fit in this stage like hand-in-glove. Logic, as a subject, matches the structure of their developing minds. Amazingly, classical and Christian schools have been quite successful in teaching college level logic to eighth graders (including formal syllogisms, fallacies, truth tables, and digital logic)!

Strawbridge, Gregg. Classical & Christian Education. Veritas Press, 2002. Third Edition