Tuition: $160.00 per year, payable in monthly installments of $20.00, semester payment $80.00 (please make all checks payable to Corina Kaul)

Supply/Materials Fee (due at registration): $20.00

Deposit (due at registration): $20.00

Grades: 7th - 9th

Minimum Class Size: 12

Maximum Class Size: 20

Class Time: 1st hour (8:30-9:25)

Prerequisites: Must come to class prepared for fun discussion and occasional healthy debate.

Estimated homework: 1 hour per week

Required Materials or Books: 

• The Fallacy Detective, Thirty-Six Lessons on How to Recognize Bad Reasoning, by Nathaniel Bluedorn and Hans Bluedorn, available at www.Christianlogic.com or you may purchase it used.
• God's World News Magazine (We will provide this as a part of the materials fee.)
• Pen or Pencils
• 1 1/2 inch 3-ringed binder with 18 page protectors

"A cloud is 90% water. A watermelon is 90% water. Therefore, since a plane can fly through a cloud, a plane can fly through a watermelon."

This statement is obviously a logic fallacy.  In this class, students will  learn to recognize common logic fallacies and propaganda techniques.  As they learn about bad reasoning, the will also learn what good thinking looks like.  Along the way, students will memorize scripture over what the Bible has to say on thinking.

The goal of this class is to get students to pause and consider how they are thinking and on what they are basing their decisions.  Students who have studied this information will be harder to dupe or sway with illogical thinking.  Written by 2 home-educated Christian brothers with a love for logic, this best-selling, award-nominated book is a FUN and approachable
introduction to logic.

Once per month, we will also read about and interact on current world events using the periodical God’s World News: Top Story as a springboard to balance news and current events with a Biblical perspective.  Students will learn to read with discernment while integrating the Bible, social studies, science and geography in developing a Biblical worldview.
 
In class we will read portions of this news guide and use it to springboard into our group discussions.  Class exercises and experiences will also seek to build a student’s thinking, writing, and speaking skills.

During the rest of the month, students will read 2 very short chapters describing a logic fallacy through use of fun cartoons, ads, roll-plays, etc.  They will also memorize Bible verses that refute each form of bad reasoning or affirm a good way of thinking.  Afterwards, they will put their new skills in recognizing bad thinking/propaganda to work by identifying approximately 10 fallacies at the end of each chapter.  They MUST come to class prepared to discuss their answers. We will also occasionally ask students to pull examples from newspapers, ads, cartoons, stories, etc. of various types of fallacies to put into a notebook that will be an organized visual display of what they have learned at the end of the year.  They may be asked to share these examples in class as a part of our weekly discussion.  Occasional prizes might pop up for great examples!  From time to time, we will also ask students to watch brief commercial clips, political speeches, etc. from the www.christianlogic.com website in preparation for class. 

Finally, there will be a short quiz based on the homework at the beginning of every class.

We will cap off each semester with a Logic Fallacy Game on the last day of class that will help test our newly discovered logic.

We will explore, equivocation, genetic fallacy, red herring, ad hominem, tu quoque, faulty appeal to authority, appeal to the people, circular reasoning, loaded question, part-to-whole, whole-to-part, either/or, hasty generalization, weak analogy, post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc, proof by lack of evidence, appeal to pity, bandwagon, exigency, repetition, transfer, snob
appeal, appeal to tradition, appeal to high-tech, appeal to fear and more.