Reasoning in School

For this I’m indebted to my Dad, who has over the years wisely entertained my impassioned ideas about
education, to my Mom, whose empathy I’ve internalized, and to many liberal teachers.

Preface

A fifth grader taught me the word ‘metacognition’, which, following her, we can take tomean “thinking about thinking”. This is an analogical exercise in metacognition. It is
secondarily an introduction to the process of reasoning and primarily an examination of basic
notions about that process, especially those that are supposed commonsense and those that are
missing from our self-concepts. As it turns out, subjecting popular metacognitive attitudes toeven minor scrutiny calls some of them seriously into question. It is my goal to do so, and toform in the mind of the reader better founded beliefs about reasoning and thereby a moreaccurate, and consequently empowering, self-understanding. I would love to set in motion themind that frees itself.

I am in the end interested in reasoning in school as it relates to the practice ofPhilosophy for Children (p4c). It is amazing that reasoning is not a part of the K-12 curriculum.
That it is not I find plainly unjustifiable and seriously unjust. In what follows I defend thisposition and consider p4c in light of it.

Because I am focused on beliefs about thinking, as opposed to the cognitive psychologyof thought, I am afforded some writing leeway. I am not a psychologist, but I have a fairmetacognitive confidence thanks to my background in philosophy. Still, I do not refrain frompresenting as fact one or two basic ideas about how reasoning works – where appropriate I
include citations. Also, of course, I work from a set of psychological assumptions. Nevertheless,this essay is not supposed to be academically rigorous nor philosophically formal (rest assured it
has been carefully composed).

In fact, I think philosophy, education, and p4c in particular stand to benefit from moreaccessible scholarship. That is, rather than advocate for p4c in a jargony philosophy journal, I
suspect proponents are better off engaging teachers, students, and parents directly. But to thisend, what is the point of trying if the audience does not value what p4c supposedly brings to theclassroom? (The person who does not value cardiovascular health cannot so easily be persuaded
to take up the habit of cardio). We should not assume that people value reasoning, inquiry,
empathy, and so on by default. Before we explain in advocacy how p4c develops these importantskills, we need to make a convincing case that the skills it develops are important. But, as far as
I can tell, too often this preliminary step is skipped and as a result the scope of people who
might be receptive to the practice is needlessly limited. And, I believe, we should feel mostcompelled to reach the individuals overlooked in this manner. That is where this longform essay
comes in. Written for administrators, teachers, and parents of K-12 children, students of p4c,
and equally for anyone who does not think very much about thinking, here goes the case forreasoning, and for p4c, in school.

Glossary
Argument​: A​ n implicit or explicit reason or set of reasons (premise(s)) given in support of aconclusion (Oxford English Dictionary, h​ ttps://www.lexico.com/en/definition/argument​). By‘argument(s)’ I do not mean verbal disagreement between two people. Arguments, as
understood in this essay, are the subject of study in critical thinking and informal logic courses
in which students usually learn, among other things, how to identify, reconstruct, and evaluate
arguments given outside the classroom (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
https://www.iep.utm.edu/argument/​).
Cognitive Bias​: A systematic error in judgment and decision-making common to all humanbeings (Encyclopedia of Human Behavior,
https://webspace.clarkson.edu/~awilke/Research_files/EoHB_Wilke_12.pdf​).
Cognitive Heuristic​: A judgment or decision-making mechanism or cognitive shortcut that relies
on little information and modest cognitive resources (Encyclopedia of Human Behavior,
https://webspace.clarkson.edu/~awilke/Research_files/EoHB_Wilke_12.pdf​).
Conclusion​: A​ judgment or decision reached by reasoning and established by the premises of anargument stepwise​ ​(​Oxford English Dictionary,https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/conclusion​).
Fallacy​: A​ fallacy is a kind of error in reasoning. Fallacious arguments should not be persuasive,
but they too often are. Fallacies may be created unintentionally, or they may be createdintentionally in order to deceive other people. The vast majority of the commonly identified
fallacies involve arguments. (​Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/​)
Premise​: T​ he premises of an argument are the reasons offered systematically in support of its
conclusion (​ ​Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ​https://www.iep.utm.edu/argument/​).
Reasoning​: Reasoning is the conscious, deliberate, and rational evaluation of arguments
according to clearly identified and ideally objective standards of proof (Elizabeth Oljar and D.R.
Koukal “How to Make Students Better Thinkers”,
https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-to-Make-Students-Better/245576​). We can think of
the terms ‘reasoning’ and ‘critical thinking’ as interchangeable in this essay. There is no widelyagreed upon definition of either.

Sound​: ​An argument is sound if and only if it is both valid and all of its premises are actually
true. Otherwise, the argument is unsound ​(Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
https://www.iep.utm.edu/val-snd/​).
Valid​: A​ n argument is valid when, if all of its premises were true, the conclusion would
necessarily follow. If it is possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion nevertheless to
be false, then an argument is said to be invalid. It should be noted that an argument with false
premises and a false conclusion can be valid. The validity or invalidity of an argument depends
on its form, not on the truth or falsity of its content. (​ Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
https://www.iep.utm.edu/val-snd/​)Part I; Reasoning

Imagine someone who does not know much about math is browsing a convenience
store. Say they grab a couple of items and bring them over to the register for ring up. The
cashier tallies the items out loud, “​A bag of chips for one dollar and a six pack of soda for seven dollars,
plus a three percent tax, okay that’ll be fifty dollars.​”​ ​The process by which the cashier arrived at $50,
however it went, cannot be arithmetically justified. The correct total is $8.24. But, the shopper
does not know enough about math to figure this out, or to even be suspicious of the cashier’s
miscalculation. So, the shopper hands over $50, accepting on authority the purported total.

Now, suppose someone who does not know much about reasoning is watching a
television program. At some point the talk show host argues, “​We can look out for everyday
Americans and bolster the economy, or we can fight climate change. Obviously, we need to lookout foreveryday Americans and bolster our economy, so we can’t address climate change.​” No matter what you
think of it, this inference is not logically justified. The argument either exemplifies the informal“false dilemma” fallacy, or the formal “affirming a disjunct” fallacy. Both are common forms ofinvalid reasoning and neither should be convincing in the least. But, the viewer does not know
enough about reasoning to figure this out, or to even be suspicious of the host’s invalid
argument. So, the viewer, thinking the argument sound, gains the belief that we should notfight climate change.

Here we have two similar situations that we tend to treat very differently. In the firstscene, the shopper’s lack of knowledge of math is taken advantage of by the cashier whose
calculation is objectively incorrect. The sum of a one dollar snack, a seven dollar six pack, and athree percent tax is not $50. There is no need to spell out the arithmetic; the charge should havebeen for $8.24. In the second scene, the viewer’s lack of knowledge of reasoning is exploited by
the talk show host whose argument is objectively invalid. Thanks to a technical complication​¹​,
the argument is fallacious in one of two ways. Either it relies on a “false dilemma”​²​, where two
options are presented as mutually exclusive and the only possibilities when in fact there areothers (we can bolster the economy o​ r ​we can fight climate change, a​ nd we can’t do both, nor
anything else)​, or it is an example of “affirming a disjunct”​³​, in which case the problem can be
explained as follows. It’s true that among the many things we can choose to do, we can bolster
the economy or we can address climate change. Perhaps it’s also true that we should bolster the
economy if doing so really would benefit everyday Americans (and not harm anyone else). So,
assuming it would be beneficial, we can safely say that we should choose to bolster the
economy. From this however, there is no logical link to the conclusion that we should not fightclimate change. Of course, we can do both things at the expense of neither. But, I am notactually making a case for either course of action.​⁴​ ​The purpose of this paragraph is rather toshow that the cashier’s math and the news host’s reasoning are equally, and objectively,
erroneous.

This analogy exposes a telling contrast. The shopper’s and the viewer’s experience arecomparably absurd, and yet we only view one as such. The situation at the convenience store isso implausible as to be almost unimaginable. The viewer’s experience, on the other hand, weshrug off. All of the time, and perhaps even more often than not, people are fooled by patently
bad arguments. And we seem to think that’s just the way it is. And then we seem to stop
thinking. Really... why do we accept this?

This state of affairs, and our apathy towards it, reflects a serious flaw in our education
system and commonsense. What makes the shopper’s experience so unrealistic is the fact thatmath is a core K-12 subject. An understanding of basic math is required of all high school
graduates; it’s unusual, even for a kid (who’s being educated), to not know anything aboutmath. As a result, math skills are rightfully respected and widespread. General reasoning, on
the other hand, is totally absent from the K-12 curriculum and there is no good reason why. Just
as anyone properly instructed can learn basic math, anyone can learn basic reasoning. And,reasoning is a skill that everyone should learn​, given that we form beliefs based on how we reason (ordon’t) over information and that our beliefs in large part determine the character and quality of
our life! Nevertheless, it’s because K-12 students don’t learn the first thing about reasoning inschool that the viewer’s experience is common (a disconcerting plenty of adults know nothing
about argumentation). If we didn’t teach math because we undervalued it, we wouldn’t thinkmuch of the shopper’s situation. It would probably be realistic. Instead, because we undervalue
and thereby don’t teach reasoning, we are indifferent towards the alterable fact that people’s
beliefs are easily manipulated by bad arguments. We don’t expect people to be capable
mathematicians absent instruction in math. Why do we apparently expect people to be capablereasoners absent instruction in reasoning? It’s amazing.

Let me pause to address a couple of salient objections. Foremost, it looks like the belief
that schools ​don’t​ teach reasoning is unpopular. It’s commonly, even if disingenuously, thoughtthat schools ​do​ teach “critical thinking”. A lot of classes at least, across a wide range of subjects
and grade levels, claim to develop “critical thinking” skills. I’ve taken them. The thought is thatworking through a number of sufficiently challenging science problems, for example, will
sharpen a student’s ability to reason. This belief is not only bad because it’s false, but wherever
we accept it we make impossible the progress we want; if our goal is to teach reasoning, it’scounterproductive to think we are meeting that goal if in fact we aren’t (same goes for any goal)!

Reasoning forms the base of performance in every school subject; in order to work out
an answer to any question posed in any class one must reason, at least to some degree. But,
taking a science test (or writing a reading comprehension response, or doing anything else donein school that supposedly develops reasoning skills) merely ​requires​ reasoning skills that are
domain specific​. No K-12 core subject actively works to ​develop​ reasoning skills that are g​ enerally
applicable​. Simply put, reasoning can’t be taught from a distance, in service to other subjects.
No matter how many word problems you complete in math class, you will not be any more thanminimally better at evaluating day-to-day arguments. Surely, there are more efficient ways toteach reasoning, actually teaching it for one. After all, if every class that claimed to teachreasoning (“critical thinking”) really did, then the viewer’s situation would be far less familiar
than it is. And, for those who might think the following, insofar as “good students” are better
reasoners than those less studious (which, as far as I can tell, is by no means generally true),their reasoning abilities cannot be attributed to their success in school. If anything, the reverse
attribution would be more applicable.​⁵

Naturally, objectors will rationalize the absence of reasoning education. They’ll most
likely contend that math is learnable and reasoning is not. This, they’ll say, is because math isuniversally governed by a set of formalized rules, whereas reasoning can’t transcend
subjectivity. Thus (maybe the thought would go?), reasoning is an aptitude that some people areborn with and others are not. Let’s think about this. What if it’s not this belief that motivates us
to exclude reasoning from the curriculum, but our neglect for reasoning in schools that
motivates this belief? If we didn’t teach people math we would be liable to assume, wrongly ofcourse, that math can’t be taught and that one’s ability to do math is therefore inflexibly innate.
As it happens, some people are naturally better at reasoning than others, just like some people
are naturally more mathematical, or musical, or what have you, than most. It only makes sense
then, that where these skills are not taught in school, people are bound to be only as good atthem as their nature makes possible. However, we don’t assume that mathematical or musicalabilities are inflexible, nor should we! Why, then, based on present-day educational inaction,
do we appear to assume that reasoning can’t be taught?

Granted, reasoning, unlike math, is to a certain extent subjective. Our reasoning
process is inseparable from our knowledge, life experiences, emotions, and other humanfactors that vary in character from person to person and from time to time. However, justbecause reasoning is an impure process does not mean that all reasoning is therefore equal.

There are still better and worse ways to reason with what we have and there are things we canlearn as K-12 students to markedly improve our skills. In fact, that reasoning is somewhat
ambiguous by nature is more, not less, reason to teach it in school. After all, reasoning skills arelife changing and everyday. Is anything but trying to teach them to every child just?

It’s worth further contesting the belief, in case it lingers and even if it’s unpopular, that
because all of us reason there are no better or worse ways to do it. It’s true, everyone isconstantly reasoning. But, if this implies anything at all, it’s that we should feel compelled toteach children how to reason w​ ell​. Sure, we are free to form beliefs based on any criteria that“works for us”. We can believe things because they have long been held true, for example.
Likewise, we are free to call the sum of seven and three seventy-three because “it looks right”.
But, where we want to figure out what’s true, we should have no problem acknowledging that itis best to believe things based on whether or not they follow logically from factually correct
premises, just like it is best to do math according to the rules thereof. There is such a thing as
bad math (e.g. 7+3=73), and there is such a thing as bad reasoning (e.g. appeal to tradition​⁶)​ .
Seven plus three​ does not equal seventy-three and nothing is necessarily true just because it haslong been believed. No matter how strongly anyone disagrees with them, these are facts. And,
just as we “do the math” accordingly, we should “do the reasoning” accordingly too, at least as
best we can.​⁷

The basic principles of reasoning are like the basic principles of math in that they are notarbitrary constructs. There is a reason we cannot program computers with invalid arguments!

Theorists have labored to discover the fundamentals of reasoning for at least as long as they
have concerned themselves with the fundamentals of mathematics. We know reasoning that is
valid is better than that which is invalid. We also know evidenced and/or axiomatic premises
are stronger than unevidenced and/or controvertible ones. And we know more about reasoningthat should be taught in school.

What, then, would it look like to teach general reasoning skills in school? I am not going
to pretend to be exactly sure, as I have not set out to answer this question. Though, I am surethat it can be answered. I will say what I think, however arbitrary the thought. In order to teachchildren general reasoning skills, students must begin to engage metacognitively in the subjectof reasoning in kindergarten and continue to engage in it all the way through 12th grade. At
least once or twice weekly. I would imagine that in this time successful teachers of reasoning
would introduce their students to philosophy, psychology, practical reasoning, informal logic,
probability and statistics, decision theory, information literacy, the “scientific method”, and soon. A half-year philosophy course in high school simply won’t do (would be nice). Only bymethodically and consistently engaging with knowledge explicitly relevant to general reasoning
will students develop a healthy rationality. By year twelve students should be better able to seek
truth, avoid intellectual oppression and control, evaluate arguments, deal with cognitive bias,
judge information as (un)reliable, and more, than had they not engaged in the subject at all.
This is to say, they should become better reasoners. And, thereby, we would expect theirperformance in other school subjects to improve​⁸!​ Still, the goal of these lessons would be tobetter the lives of students outside of the classroom, by refining and fortifying their reasoningprocess. We don’t want anyone to be easily taken advantage of by obviously bad arguments.
Conversely, we want everyone to be able to recognize their own best interest and reach theirintellectual potential. We want intelligent, free minds, because they are possible.

Undoubtedly, this proposal will be dismissed as unrealistic by some. To these people I
would simply point out that school as it is is “unrealistic”. The thinking student’s favorite
question is “why are we learning this?”, and rarely is the teacher’s answer satisfactory (throughno fault of their own; often there’s no clear reason). It’s important to build a foundation​ i​ n awide range of subjects, yes. But, not everyone will need to expertly write essays, or do math, or
consider history, or whatever it may be day-to-day. However, I can guarantee you that everyone
will need to reason everyday, and anyone who wants to maintain a free and honest intellect willneed to do it well. If there is one subject to teach in school it is reasoning. And, I bet if you ask
teachers who are burdened year after year with bureaucratic regulations and reforms, they’ll
agree that things as they stand are not so “realistic”. I’m not about adding to their burden. I’m
only suggesting that we seriously rethink our c​ urriculum's​ priorities and our culture’s
metacognitive commonsense. Especially now that people can educate and miseducate
themselves online where all of humanity’s information and disinformation awaits reasonable
and unreasonable minds, and motivated and unmotivated learners, indiscriminately. And weshould probably start this rethinking in the colleges of education where teachers are trained.

In brief, I have tried to show that it is absurd to be okay with the fact that countless
people are all of the time falling victim to terrible arguments. I’ve argued that this state ofaffairs is unjustifiable, and that we can change it for the better by adding reasoning to the K-12
curriculum. Now, I’ll explain why we should.

First, let me acknowledge a worry. Advocacy for Logic and Reason taken to the extreme
tries to mechanicalize the natural, quantify the unquantifiable, and in general oversimplify
humanity. That’s not at all my goal. We need a “logic” guided by empathy​ ​(if there’s a mostimportant sentence in this essay, it’s this one). In the absence of emotion – even though at leastas far as we can utilize them the two are inextricable – reasoning can be severely inhumane; wehave to decide what to reason about after all. For example, we can utilize reasoning to help
revitalize indigenous languages or to build more efficient weapons of mass destruction.
Between them, which we should choose is obvious thanks to our humanity, not thanks toreason in and of itself. The Human Spirit goes deeper than reasoning can. Furthermore, I havenot argued that there is a “right way” to think (there obviously isn’t), only that there are better
and worse ways to r​ eason​. In fact, I think reasoning is a creative process, one that certainly
benefits from, if not ultimately requires, viewpoint diversity. In certain circumstances it canalso be smart to be unreasonable. But, at the same time, at no point in your life would better
reasoning make you worse off. Therefore, I believe the more present danger is notoveremphasizing reasoning, but underemphasizing it.

To not teach reasoning in schools is to accept political dysfunction. To the extent wewant to live in a reasonable society, we need a reasonable citizenry. We don’t want others to beeasily manipulated such that they act against the collective best interest, for example. Everysocial condition that’s desirable is achieved collaboratively, in communities, in countries, andon Earth. It is very difficult to collaborate with unreasonable people. And yet, seemingly all we
do is complain about unreason (the alternative clearly being to actually address the indeed very
serious problem by teaching children the reasoning basics). Thankfully, we don’t think of thepeople who cannot do math because they haven’t learned how to as inherently unintelligent. We
know they can be taught. And yet, we tend to call the least reasonable among us – people whohave never had a chance to learn how to reason – “stupid”. This tendency is not only morally
wrong, but factually baseless too. There is no such thing as an intrinsically unintelligent person,
there are only people who have learned how to reason and people who have not had the same
good fortune. And here I have in mind the prevailing idea of what intelligence is, which is itself
deeply flawed, and whose collapse under minimal scrutiny is further evidence to my thesis that
there are no inherently “unintelligent” people. But that’s for another essay. Anyways, there isnothing great about “us and them” thinking with respect to reason and unreason. I reject it, but
I’ll adopt it momentarily. Let “us” not just complain; let “us” make it “our” responsibility to teach“them” reasoning for everyone’s sake, and, as you’ll see, most sincerely for “theirs”. You don’t
need to know a lot about the world in any sense at all to identify a bad argument. Goodreasoning is something anyone can learn, and whether or not it’s recognized to be, it’s a basic
human right that everyone deserves (think of it like we think of literacy).

Would effective reasoning education put an end to motivated reasoning? No, of coursenot. There will always be unashamed irrationality, even among those who know how to reason.
Would there be people for whom good reasoning is very difficult to internalize? Yes, for sure.

Although, children’s minds are remarkably flexible and adaptive (consider the scope and variety
of world cultures and technologies to which we have adapted). There is no reason to think thatchildren wouldn’t be able to learn how to reason well under the right circumstances. Would
every social problem be solved if reasoning was taught in school? Not to be expected. Wouldn’t
we be collectively better at problem solving, though? And wouldn’t we be better able to prioritize
which problems to solve? But, not only is our disregard for reasoning politicallydisadvantageous, it is much more so, even if less obviously, for individual persons.

Remember the shopper and viewer? It’s clear in what way the shopper is taken
advantage of, they are effectively robbed of $41.76. But, how is the viewer taken advantage of in
any way comparable? What does it matter that they gain an unreasoned belief, namely that we
can’t fight climate change? Without getting into the specifics of this particular thought, whose
consequence is self-evident, I’ll answer. Historically speaking, we are lucky to live in a time andplace in which physical force is not acceptably used to coerce and control. We enjoy our
freedom. Or so we think. As it turns out, institutions and individuals have not stopped
exercising influence and control over us. Their means of doing so have simply changed fromforce to arguments.

If I am a fossil fuel corporation, I not only want you to, I need you to believe that climatechange is not worth fighting, irrespective of the truth of the matter. If I am a politicalcandidate, I don’t just want you to believe that certain people are bad, and that I will fix things, I
need you to believe it, whether or not it’s true. If I am selling you a product, it’s not enough towant you to think it’s great, I need you to think it’s great, and I need you to think you want it.
For business to go on as usual, you need to believe things. The same goes for journalism.
Immoral actors benefit from your indifference. The downtrodden benefit from your empathy.
Fundamentalism requires dogmatism. Progress requires advocacy. State-corporate entities
manufacture ignorance. Universities manufacture “knowledge”. All of these things makearguments with the explicit goal of changing your beliefs, even when there’s no legitimate
argument to be made. If you cannot reason, then, you will take seriously invalid, unsound, andotherwise objectively bad arguments, and as a result you will believe false things. And, nomatter the truth or falsity of your beliefs, no matter the strength or weakness of the reasoning
process by which you came to them, you will think and act on their basis. This is just to say thatthose who cannot reason well are bound to be unfree because they can be easily influenced andcontrolled by illegitimate arguments. The freethinker, on the other hand, defends themself
from certainty and disinformation; the freethinker keeps an open mind; the freethinker
pursues truth critically; and therefore, the freethinker reasons well, necessarily. Where there is
not freethought, there’s not likely to be freedom in any real sense.

If you’re confused at all, it might be helpful to adopt the following idea. To extend theanalogy, just like we participate in monetary transactions, we participate in what could becalled ‘belief transactions’ too, when we try to convince others with our arguments and whenothers try to convince us with theirs (where beliefs are the currency, the value or disvalue of
which corresponds to their proximity to truth). Belief transactions happen everyday, manytimes daily in fact, and most often implicitly. Friends and family, social customs, news,advertisements, teachers, whatever; insofar as anything can affect your beliefs at any given
time, it makes an argument. For example, a plainly stated fact is an argument, granted notalways a good one. The fact itself is a conclusion that is inferred, if at all, from implicit
premises. The goal of the statement is to get you to believe it. Even more abstractly, thateveryone cuts their lawn, for instance, is an argument on this view. This is because when you
observe those around you cutting their lawn, you come to believe, or not, that you should cut
yours (“because everyone else is doing it”). Most belief transactions, though, involve multiple
inputs and are drawn out over long periods of time. There is no default set of beliefs or
behaviors, yours you’ve come to transactionally – you’ve encountered arguments that lead you
to them.

Really, we can say that arguments are everywhere, oftentimes implicit and other times
explicit, constantly pushing and pulling on our beliefs. If you cannot or do not reason about thearguments you encounter, you’re likely to end up acting rather mindlessly against your bestinterest, or, at least, in ways you wouldn’t had you reasoned about them. The shopper loses
money in an illegitimate monetary transaction because they do not know the first thing aboutmath. The viewer gains a false belief in an illegitimate “belief transaction” because they do notknow the first thing about reasoning. If either knew just the basics, they would have come away
much better off. But, as they stand, neither the shopper or the viewer knows what they have lost(money and freethought respectively). How could they? If you’ve not learned anything about
reasoning, it’s almost certainly the case that more than a couple of your beliefs are untrue (we all
have some number of false beliefs). You wouldn’t know which because you can’t help but believe

them, by definition. You can retrospectively assess the integrity of the process by which you
came to them, though. Unlearning and learning are equally important. Anyhow, to go on
without making an effort to be reasonable is to go on losing money (gaining false beliefs) left
and right, without even knowing it.

Consider once more the viewer. Maybe the news host is propagandizing a special
interest. Maybe they are arguing fallaciously despite knowing it’s illegitimate to do so. Morelikely, though, the news host is arguing in good faith. That is to say, there’s a decent chance thenews host ​genuinely believes​ what they are saying. Not everyone who argues poorly sets out tomaliciously influence others. Don’t get me wrong, some do. But, a lot of the time those who
argue fallaciously to false conclusions don’t know what they are doing because they themselves
cannot reason well. Their arguments are honest.

A retail example of this phenomenon would be the average climate change denier living
in a flood zone. Such a person sincerely wants whatever is best for themself, their children,
their grandchildren, and maybe even for their country. They genuinely believe, on the basis ofpoor reasoning (this they don’t know), that climate change doesn’t pose a problem for anyone oranything they care about. In fact, they may think the very concept of a climate crisis is
altogether incoherent. So, when they argue that we need to concern ourselves with other things,
from their perspective they ​are​ looking out for themself, their children, their grandchildren,and their country. Little do they know that they are arguing against their own, and everyone

else’s, best interest. Only well-reasoned individuals can break easily from cycles of unreason.
And, some such cycles are very dangerous; irrationality is the motor of immorality.

Isn’t ignorance bliss, though? No, not really; sure, unreasonable beliefs can beconsoling, but, as the antithetical aphorism goes, the truth will set you free. Never mind thepragmatic case above, the value of true belief was best elucidated by Plato in the “Allegory of
the Cave”​⁹​, thousands of years ago. In the Allegory, there are “prisoners”’ who are chainedsuch that they always face the back wall of a cave, from birth. Shadows are projected onto thewall by people who walk back and forth along a bridge behind them. These shadows and thenoises of their creators make up reality for the prisoners, who never realize that they are in a
cave, let alone that there is an outside world. One prisoner escapes and is at first blinded by
the sunlight. When things come into focus, his conception of reality collapses under thesensory experience of the “real world”. Eagerly, he goes back down into the cave to free theothers. But, his claims about the world outside are so f​ oreign​ to the prisoners that they
confidently dismiss him as crazy. You might conclude from Plato’s Allegory that it’s possible to
not know what you’re missing. To the extent you think that you have everything figured out,
you are effectively a “prisoner” in Plato’s Cave. Don’t, like the prisoners, reject this possibility.
Next time you consider a thinker to be aloof, test their thoughts against good reason. Maybe
you’re happy with your beliefs as they are. If so, why change a thing? The prisoners thought
the same and were forever unaware how much happier they could be. Were they able andwilling to reason thoughtfully, perhaps they would have made it out.

Holding poorly reasoned beliefs is in some ways a less manifest detriment than losing
money, but it is one of more consequence (the viewer is worse off than the shopper, I think).
Our beliefs make all the difference in our life, and the integrity of any given conscious belief
depends on the learned process of reasoning. Therefore, it is our moral duty to teach every
child how to reason well, for their own sake.

Everyone should have the chance to reach their full potential. All minds are owed asense of possibility and wonder. Freethought is a grossly underrated freedom, but it isfreedom in the truest sense of the word. It is something that everyone deserves, and it issomething that everyone can attain.

Part II; Driving School for Reasoning

The next couple of pages concern a second analogy that some readers will findrepetitive. I’ve included it because I suspect it may help those unclear to see the full scope of theidea. Furthermore, from it I transition nicely into a brief discussion of Philosophy for Children(p4c). Here it goes.

It would not make any sense if someone with no knowledge concerning the rules of theroad or the elementary workings of a car could legally drive unsupervised on public roads. Most
commuters would strongly oppose unregulated roadways seeing as their safety would be
immediately compromised. And, not only would untrained and uninformed drivers pose athreat to other travelers, foremost they would imperil themselves. In order to drive, one mustbe familiar with the rules of the road (e.g. stop at a red light) and the elementary workings of acar (e.g. left pedal brakes and right pedal accelerates).

The purpose of driving school is obvious and communal. No driver wants to share theroad with anyone who is unsupervised and wholly ignorant of the basics, nor, presumably, does
any person want to endanger themselves by way of unpreparedness.

Now, imagine if everyone on Earth drove a car. Further imagine that very few of thesedrivers were taught the rules of the road and/or the elementary workings of their car, and thatknowledge of these things was actually uncommon. I want to say that we are in this position

with respect to reasoning. In order to reason well one must know the basic rules of valid
reasoning (informal logic) and the elementary workings of their brain (the car of reasoning).
But, we do not teach children these things before we send them out into the world to reason!
And, as you would expect, the world as a result is a wildly unreasonable place (in some ways
that’s actually a great thing, but there are many ways in which it isn’t). Everyone is out there
reasoning, and only a minority are lucky enough to have actually learned how to reason at all.
It’s as if we assume that everyone just knows how to reason well by default. This is not a good
assumption for apparent reasons (for one, a majority of people don’t!); it’s analogous toassuming that everyone knows how to drive naturally and therefore no one needs to be taught
how at any point before they take to the roads. None of us, I don’t think, would take this bet.

The good news is that like driving, basic reasoning can be learned by anyone. Anyone
who witnesses a car driving on the wrong side of the road at twice the speed limit recognizes
immediately that what’s going on is bad driving. But, take an equally obvious case of badreasoning: say someone fallaciously “argues from ignorance”​¹⁰​. Far fewer people realize that
this move is totally illegitimate. Nevertheless, like the reckless driver is in complete violation of
the rules of the road, the lazy reasoner is in complete violation of the rules of valid reasoning.

Now, of course there should be nothing at all close to “enforcement” of the rules in thecase of reasoning, no one would want to live in a world in which this was the case. It’s not as
though we should require a license to reason, that would be equally problematic. The analogy todriving does not extend nearly that far. But, shouldn’t we teach people how to reason, for theirown and everyone’s well-being, just as we teach drivers-to-be how to drive for the same reason?

We know what the rules of the road are (stop at a red light, proceed slowly at a yellow, go
at a green, turn left from the left lane and right from the right lane, give the main road the rightof way, etc.) and what counts as knowledge of the elementary workings of one’s car (knowing
which pedal accelerates and which brakes, knowing how to put the car into park, knowing
where blind spots are, and so on). What, then, are the rules of valid reasoning and theelementary workings of (our car of reasoning) the brain?

As far as we’re concerned, the rules of valid reasoning are simply the rules of logic,
which we can think of informally. “[​Informal logic] combines the study of argument, evidence,
proof and justification with an instrumental outlook which emphasizes its usefulness in theanalysis of real life arguing.”​¹¹​ Informal logic provides us with an analysis of everyday
argumentation from which we can derive generic rules of good reasoning. Many of these rules
are negative rules in the sense that they tell us what ​not​ to do. That is, they tell us what kind of
reasoning is invalid.

What are the “elementary workings of the brain”? Much like a car, our brain works incertain ways, and in order to operate it effectively we ought to know, at a basic level, how it
tends to work. Without reading beyond it, answer this question: A bat and a ball cost $1.10, thebat costs $1 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?

Most people will say ten cents. But, in order for the bat to be one dollar more than theball, and the total to be one dollar and ten cents, the ball must cost five cents. This is one
example problem of many – in which cognitive reflexes common to all humans make it difficult
for us to perform easy reasoning tasks – from Nobel laureate economist Daniel Kahneman’sbook “Thinking, Fast and Slow”​¹²​. Objectively, it’s a very easy problem to solve, one that acomputer could be programmed to solve quickly. For humans, something makes it difficult.
Even if you got it right (in which case you should try the one at the end of this document​¹³​), why
did it take so long? Our brain defaults to shortcuts – many of which are helpful most of the time
– that can impair our reasoning process. These shortcuts are called cognitive heuristics, andthey pervade our thinking. We are also cognitively biased in certain ways. For example, we tend
to seek out and better recall information that confirms our preconceptions by a phenomenon
called ‘confirmation bias’​¹⁴​.

There are hundreds of cognitive biases and heuristics, many of which come into playeveryday. These facts of our cognition are analogous to the workings of a driver’s car. Before
you drive it’s helpful (and necessary, no?) to have a rough idea about your car’s turning radius,and your car’s braking distance, for example. In the same respect, before you can reason
effectively you need to know your brain’s tendencies, to neglect base rate information for
instance​¹⁵​. Knowing how your brain works affords you the chance to correct for unhelpful
imperfections – at least to some considerable degree – that otherwise naturally steer you awayfrom quality reasoning of which you are capable.

By the very nature of our thinking process we do not reason perfectly, but because
children aren’t taught this fact about themselves, many go on into adulthood implicitly
assuming that they do. And this unthought assumption leads to another, namely that the truthof any given matter is whatever they think it is. But, to assume that the truth must make sense
to us, to assume that it’s something we k​ now​, is to be recklessly self-confident. That matters offact do not necessarily accord with our beliefs about them is an essential understanding. What’strue is true, whether we know it or not and no matter how intensely we may believe it’s false,
and the same goes vice versa. If there isn’t a teapot revolving around the sun, then there isn’t ateapot revolving around the sun, even if I believe ever so strongly, for whatever reason, that
there is. Truth does not fall into our lap, we need to actively and never-endingly quest for it, andwe must reason if we can hope to approximate it. And, in order to reason well we need to know
certain things about the process and about ourselves.

By no means is knowledge of the rules of valid reasoning and the elementary workingsof the brain sufficient for good reasoning. But, a basic understanding of logic and cognition isnecessary. It’s a foundation from which reasoning skills can be developed. This is true in thesame way that one needs to know the rules of the road and the elementary workings of their car
in order to drive well. Yes, we all reason everyday. But, until we all learn how to reason, like welearn how to drive, the roads of reason will remain hazardous, and individual thinkers will be
ill-prepared to navigate themselves to the places they want to go.

What we need in K-12 education is a driving school for reasoning.

Part III​; p4c as Practice

A critical part of the process of learning how to drive is practice. New drivers learn in thecompany of experienced ones, in settings (maybe an empty parking lot, or in a car that includes
a brake at the passenger’s foot for an instructor) that are forgiving of mistakes. In school, there
seems to be no analogous exercise. That is, “students of reasoning” start on the public roads.
Their judgments from the beginning are evaluated on correctness by grades. This incentivises
students to “drive to their destination”, to reason to their answers, not in accordance with any
principles, but just in some way that gets them there (rote memorization, say).

The practice of Philosophy for Children (p4c) is the practice of reasoning without
penalty. Longtime practitioner Thomas Jackson puts it in terms of ‘Intellectual Safety’. He
writes, “All participants in the community [of inquiry] are free to ask virtually any question orstate any view so long as respect for all is honored.”​¹⁶​ Resources such as “The Good Thinker’s
Tool Kit”​¹⁷​ lay out a set of reasoning habits for students to practice. One of the p4c facilitator'sroles is to gently guide students towards better reasoning. They do this in a manner that isalways mindful of the fact that in order to improve at something one must practice it freely.
That is, one must not be judged by their mistakes and instead be encouraged to learn from andkeep risking them! Moreover, because p4c inquiry has no known destination or right answer,
students can do nothing but reason to their conclusions. It’s by no means clear that p4c issufficient for developing reasoning skills, but something like it seems necessary to the extent
practice is.

And, as an important aside, p4c is so much more than reasoning practice. It looks likestudents and their teacher sitting in a circle inquiring together, focused on a central questionthat they, “the community of inquiry”, decide(s) upon. This activity, done well, is of tremendous
intrinsic​ value; so much in fact that I can’t describe (assuming it’s goodness is describable) all
that’s good about here. Though, one thing in particular that I love about p4c is its relationship to
empathy. Remember the “most important sentence in this essay”? “We need a “logic” guided by
empathy.” With respect to this statement, what’s valuable about the practice is that students
and teachers share, on an equal plane, their diverse ideas, experiences, knowledges, andthought processes. Participants’ worldviews necessarily broaden, and oftentimes deeply
personal things are brought up in conversation. It’s impossible to come away from a p4c session
without more empathy. We tend to look at ourselves subjectively and others objectively. p4c
improves our ability to do the opposite.

Philosophy for Children originated with the late Matthew Lipman, a professor ofphilosophy at Columbia University. He founded p4c because:“Back in the Early ‘70s, when my own children were about 10 or 11 years old, the school
they were attending did not give them the instruction in reasoning that I thought theyneeded. I was teaching logic at the college level at the time, and I felt that I wasn’t
accomplishing very much with my students because it was too late; they should have had
instruction in reasoning much earlier. So I decided I would do something to help
children at the middle school level learn to reason.”​¹⁸

He goes on in the same interview to say:“The most important thing that we can do for young children is teach them to think well.
If we’re serious about wanting to teach students to think, we’ve got to go about it in a
responsible fashion. This means giving students practice in reasoning, throughclassroom discussion involving concepts that reach across all the disciplines rather thanthose that are specialized within each subject.”Let’s get serious about teaching students how to reason well.

Annotations¹​Which fallacy the argument exemplifies depends on whether we understand its disjunction, its‘or’, to be exclusive or inclusive. For reference, here is the argument: “​We can look out for everyday
Americans and bolster the economy, or we can fight climate change. Obviously, we need to lookout foreveryday Americans and bolster our economy, so we can’t address climate change.​” An exclusive
disjunction (‘or’) allows only one of two or more propositions to be true (think “either this orthat”). So, if we take it to be exclusive, then the argument is fallacious because it presents a“false dilemma”. An inclusive disjunction (‘or’) allows both propositions to be true. If we take it
to be inclusive, then the argument is fallacious because it “affirms a disjunct”.
²​A reasoner who unfairly presents two (black and white) alternatives and implies that one (andonly one) of them can and must be chosen is using the False Dilemma Fallacy (Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ​https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#FalseDilemma​).
³​One premise is a disjunction (a statement with ‘or’), the other premise affirms one of the
disjuncts (one of the two statements separated by ‘or’), and the conclusion denies the otherdisjunct (Florida State University Math,https://www.math.fsu.edu/~wooland/mad2104/logic/rules.html​). Consider a simpler argumentof the same form. ​Tom is polite or quiet.​ (True, he may be polite, or quiet, or any number of otherthings). T​ om is polite, so Tom is not quiet.​ Clearly, Tom can be both polite a​ nd​ quiet, and the factthat he is polite has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not he is quiet. In just the same way
we can bolster the economy ​and​ address the climate crisis.
⁴​In fact, the argument would be just as bad if it went like so: “​ We can lookout for everyday
Americans and fight climate change, or we can bolster the economy. Obviously we should lookout foreveryday Americans and fight climate change, so we can’t bolster the economy.”
⁵​See Elizabeth Oljar and D.R. Koukal’s “How to Make Students Better Thinkers”:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-to-Make-Students-Better/245576
⁶​A fallacious argument that presumes something is true just because it’s long been held true.
⁷​Just to be clear, I’m talking about truth in one sense of the word and not in any other. Nothing
akin to Truth (with a capital T, of spiritual significance) can be attained by any process of empty
reasoning. In this essay I’m concerned with simple truths, those we argue about day-to-day,such as whether or not we should fight climate change, and I’m interested in improving people’sability to approximate them (because I think that we can and that it’s morally problematic that
we don’t even try to).

⁸​As to quantitative performance in standard subjects, research on the effect of instruction in
general reasoning is limited. The most comprehensive study to date of p4c concludes that thepractice impacts positively test scores across subjects. The paper:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305787078_Evaluation_of_the_impact_of_Philosoph
y_for_Children_on_children's_academic_outcomes
⁹​Here’s the text:​ h​ ttps://web.stanford.edu/class/ihum40/cave.pdf¹⁰​The Fallacy of Appeal to Ignorance comes in two forms: one, not knowing that a certain
statement is true is taken to be a proof that it is false and two, not knowing that a statement isfalse is taken to be a proof that it is true. The fallacy occurs in cases where absence of evidence is
not good enough evidence of absence. The fallacy uses an unjustified attempt to shift theburden of proof. The fallacy also goes by “Argument from Ignorance.” N​ obody has ever proved tome there's a God, so I know there is no God. T​ his kind of reasoning is generally fallacious. It would beproper reasoning only if the proof attempts were quite thorough, and it were the case that, if
the being or object were to exist, then there would be a discoverable proof of its existence.
Another common example of the fallacy involves ignorance of a future event. Y​ ou people have been
complaining about the danger of Xs ever since they were invented, but there's never been any big problem
with Xs, so there's nothing to worry about.​ (​ Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#FalseDilemma​)¹¹​(Leo Groarke. Informal Logic. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-informal/​)¹²​(D​ aniel Kahneman. T​ h​ inking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)¹³​Alex, who is married, is looking at Bailey. Bailey is looking at Cam who is unmarried.
Is there a married person looking at an unmarried person?
Many people will say that there is not enough information. But, there is. While we don’t know
Bailey’s marital status, we do know that for any person, that person must be either married or
unmarried. If Bailey is married, then Bailey looking at Cam is a married person looking at an
unmarried person. If Bailey is unmarried, then Alex looking at Bailey is a married person
looking at an unmarried person. So, the answer is yes, and we know it with certainty. This isn’t
from “T​hinking, Fast and Slow”, but again it’s an objectively simple problem that is for us hard
to solve because of certain facts about how our brain reasons.

¹⁴​Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for evidence in favor of one's hypothesis and to notlook for disconfirming evidence thereof, or to pay insufficient attention to it (​ I​ nternet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ​https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#ConfirmationBias​).
¹⁵​Here is a good example of “base rate neglect”, from​ ​Francis E. Su, et al.:https://www.math.hmc.edu/funfacts/ffiles/30002.6.shtml¹⁶​(Thomas Jackson. ​Philosophical Rules of Engagement. R​ outledge: An Introduction for
Philosophers and Teachers, 1st Edition.)¹⁷​Here:http://p4chawaii.org/wp-content/uploads/PI-Good-Thinker%E2%80%99s-Tool-Kit-2.0.pdf¹⁸​(Ron Brandt. ​On Philosophy in the Curriculum: A conversation with Matthew Lipman.
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development​ Publications.
http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el_198809_brandt3.pdf​)