Parenting Strategy 11:
Teach Your Child to Think Clearly and Solve Problems
BY ARLENE F. HARDER, MA, MFT
Three Non Sequitur cartoons by Wiley Miller:
A cartoon shows two tough-looking tattooed motorcyclists on fully-loaded bikes pulled up in front of a bar. The sign in the window states, "The Knee-Jerk Saloon — Every nite is politics and religion nite!"
The caption reads: "No way Dude. This place looks way too scary. . ."
In this cartoon a man in a coat and tie is sitting in the lotus position on a rug in front of a radio and repeating the mantra, "Tell me my opinion. Tell me my opinion. Tell me my opinion. Tell me my opinion. . . ."
The caption reads: "Talk Radio Meditation"
Here the picture shows four men in the center of an intersection and each is going in a different direction while carrying a sign saying "Follow me to the truth"
The caption reads: "The opening ceremony of the annual dogma day parade."
"I . . . don't know quite when I began to pay attention to all the misinformation, disinformation, and flagrant abuse of the general public's lack of education in logic and elementary mathematical skills, but I do know that I found it everywhere. I didn't just find a misleading statistic or pronouncement here and there, now and then. I found it (and still do) every day, in every way, throughout the most respected information sources in the country, but most especially from—no surprise—our government. This phenomenon isn't the exception. It's the rule."
—Marilyn Vos Savant in The Power of Logical Thinking: Easy Lessons in the Art of Reasoning . . . and Hard Facts About its Absence in Our Lives
Although TV anchors cram brief news into a few minutes between light-hearted banter and ubiquitous commercials, they give viewers the impression that they've delivered enough for anyone to form an intelligent opinion. After listening to a few of these hard-breaking two-minute news reports and reading a few blogs that expound a single point of view (blogs that not infrequently quote blogs who agree with them), we soon find ourselves repeating sound bites with which we agree and dismissing opposing points of view as misguided or ignorant. We become increasingly polarized between us and them, friends and enemies, good guys and bad guys, black and white.
I'm reminded of a comment made by Richard Simon, Ph.D., editor of Psychotherapy Newsletter and opening speaker at a conference in Washington, D.C. that happened to begin the same day as the start of the Iraq war. He said that "the world is not burdened by an overabundance of wisdom." He went on to say that when he was a beginning marriage counselor, he didn't have many techniques in his bag of tricks. So when a couple shouted at one another, he learned to sit back, take a deep breath, nod wisely, and, when asked for his opinion, thoughtfully respond by saying, "Well, I think it's a little more complicated than that."
Of course, it's human nature to be passionate about our ideas and ideals. The problem arises when we allow our passions to do our thinking for us. Seeing things from another perspective is in short supply. We want the other guy to recognize the validity of our position. The other guy is thinking the same.
What is needed is the willingness on both parties to step back and explore the evidence for a middle ground. That will not be possible if we are unable to use critical thinking to get past our passions. However, if we honestly and logically examine the basis for our position, there is a good chance we will continue to hold the same beliefs with which we started out, but we will likely be better able to acknowledge the validity of some of the other person's perspective, and might even convince him to see our point of view.
The Need for Critical Thinking Throughout Life
When your child graduates from high school or college, he'll be expected to make decisions that affect not only his own life, but that of his family, community, nation, and the world. He will be asked to vote on issues ranging from funding for education to social security and from immigration policy to gay rights. He will find himself in the middle of discussions on taxes, stem cell research, abortion, national debt, immigration, and other issues where there is bound to be a difference of opinion.
You want him to be able to arrive at a logical conclusion when discussing complex issues. You want him to make wise choices in employment, buying a house, or choosing the best health care plan. Given the current discussions on Social Security, you also hope he will select the best private investment plan. Logic and clear reasoning will help him in thousands of decisions he will make throughout his life.
There are, of course, a number of areas in life that can't be analyzed with logic. Spirituality is one. Falling in love is another. However, knowing when logic is required is, in itself, an important aspect of balancing our left and right brains.
The job of helping your child learn how to think clearly and solve problems most effectively is a big order and at the end of this article I offer a few suggestions for how you can do that. But the focus of this parenting strategy is not so much to give you specific how-to's as it is to emphasize the importance of critical thinking—beyond the doing well enough to get decent grades in school—and to encourage you to help your child reason clearly.
Why We Often Fail to Think Logically
The need to teach the next generation how to think clearly in a search for solutions to complex issues has perhaps never been more important. As Richard Simon said, "the world is not burdened by an overabundance of wisdom" and it may be that your child is the one who helps us find a way out of the mess we're in. Unfortunately, there are pitfalls lying in the path of clear and accurate reasoning. The following are a few:
 We interpret information to fit our biases and assumptions because our ego has a stake in being right.
Too frequently we equate our sense of self, our very being, with our beliefs and opinions. Then it can take a great deal of effort to dislodge misinformation we've accepted as true, especially if we've already declared that we support one side of an argument. To change our minds means we would have to admit that we had been wrong, which takes a lot of courage and ego strength.
So some of the time we accept, without question, a "fact" that fits comfortably in a world view that supports our ego. Other times, our egos can be flattered into making a poor decision. How many of us have been told by a salesperson that he only has our interests in mind and that we can trust him because he knows we're smart—then he goes ahead and gets us to buy something that isn't in our best interest after all?
Because it takes time, effort and energy to explore all sides of an issue, there is a tendency for all of us—liberals and conservatives, fundamentalists of all religious persuasions, moderate believers, agnostics, and atheists, the well educated and those with little education, members of every race and culture—to see the world from our perspective and assume we have arrived at the truth. It is no wonder that Democrats read statistics to support their suppositions and Republicans read the same statistics another way.
We all have illusions about some things. Many years ago, shortly before Nixon resigned, the respected reporter Walter Cronkite said something I have never forgotten. He said, "When I first learned of the president's role in Watergate, I felt disillusioned about the presidency. Then I realized that you can't be disillusioned if you haven't first allowed yourself to have illusions." And one of the most dangerous illusions is the assumption that you can't be wrong.
We think we know more than we do and can hold strongly held opinions without any facts or knowledge to support them.
In 1992 the National Center for Research in Economic Education and the Gallup Organization did a survey of high school seniors, college seniors, and the general public concerning "economic literacy." The overview noted that "all survey respondents had strong opinions about economic issues despite the fact that they often had very limited economic knowledge about an economic issue. . . . This economic illiteracy has the potential to misshape public opinion on economic issues and lead to economic policies that have negative or perverse effects on the economy."
Paul Volcker, former chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve System, has been quoted as saying, "While interest in matters of economics runs high in American minds, their understanding of the subject lags far behind their counterparts in other industrialized countries."
You've undoubtedly had occasions when a person became adamant about a topic on which you were well-informed and on which they were not. Their opinion rested firmly on suppositions. On the other hand, surely there have been times when others have ended a conversation with you in which you stretched your knowledge about a subject a bit thin, but still felt entitled to offer an opinion. I know I've done that more than once.
We accept most statistics without question (unless they support the position of an opponent).
If statistics could talk, I suspect they would embarrassed to find themselves in charts and news that is exaggerated, oversimplified, twisted, irrelevant, distorted and sensationalized. But we love statistics, even when they are irrelevant. We like quoting them and the fewer that are used the more powerful is their effect. Thus, if we don't learn about, or search out, statistics that can support a counter-argument, we are bound to come to a distorted conclusion.
Unfortunately, the ability to use math practically in daily life is often lacking. For example, let's look at averages. The terms "mean," "median," and "mode" are often used to refer to averages, but they describe very different facts. If we don't know which "average" is being used, we're likely to go skittering down the path our information source wants us to follow.
Incidentally, if you need a brief review, "mean" is the arithmetical average in which the total of all the items is added together and then the sum is divided by the number of items. The "median" is the numerical middle, that is, if there are eleven items, the sixth item is the median, no matter what its value. "Mode" is the most common number.
We tend to accept the logic of conclusions offered by authorities and experts.
We can be misled by verbal as well as numerical fallacies. Take syllogisms, for example. A syllogism is an argument with two premises and a conclusion. The problem occurs when we assume that one of the premises is true when it is not. When we take such statements at face value, we accept a conclusion that is false.
Marilyn Vos Savant writes a regular feature emphasizing logic and reasoning for the weekly "Parade Magazine." In her book, The Power of Logical Thinking: Easy lessons in the Art of Reasoning . . . and Hard Facts About its Absence in Our Lives she discusses why she feels the public is often fooled by politicians, pundits, salespersons, newscasters, public-relations experts, journalists, ad-writers, and others with political and social agendas:
Nearly everyone who influences public opinion—from social leaders to politicians—uses syllogism to arrive at incorrect conclusions, and it's difficult to believe that this is usually by accident. After all, the conclusions nearly always "prove" the point the person wants to make. I'd go so far as to say that never before, in the history of this country, have citizens been so jerked around logically to the point where they have become incapable of making reasonable decisions. . . . By using every logical error known to mankind in an effort to further one or another special interest, we have begun to reap what we have sown—the seeds of intellectual weakness and mental disorder.
We don't read the small print.
Recently during a National Public Radio discussion on the tactics of car salespeople, a lawyer (that's right, a lawyer) admitted he hadn't read the details for the contract of a car he thought he was buying. He discovered later that it was a leasing contract.
When we haven't been taught to pay attention to details, we are at the mercy of salespeople, whether or not they are being dishonest. It's up to us to watch out for ourselves. Take credit cards, for example. If you don't pay attention to details, you can conclude that it's good to pay just the minimum on your balance each month. In fact, by paying only the minimum, you end up paying for your purchases many times over.
Okay, let's admit it. We use sloppy reasoning too much of the time. In large part this is because most of us have not had the training in logic we should have had in school. We were not taught how to reason more clearly and how to recognize when information is not accurate, or when we need additional facts.
Becoming Your Child's Logic Coach
How you teach your child to avoid as many pitfalls of uncritical thinking as possible will depend on your child's age. Early in life, during the first three stages, you lay the foundation for logic by letting your child know he is capable of exploring the world and discovering how things work. You give him boxes to play with so he learns the physical limitations of objects, for example, that small boxes fit into larger boxes but large boxes can't fit into smaller ones.
You give him consequences when he breaks a rule so he can learn cause and effect. You make certain he learns to count and multiply, making mathematics a part of his daily life, for mathematics is simply logic with numbers. You keep the lines of communication open so that he knows he can count on you to help him reason out the solutions to his problems.
In the middle and teen years, you teach logic a bit differently. Now you help your child use the reasoning techniques he learned earlier and apply them to his growing independence. As he moves beyond home and school, you can best help him enter this expanding world by showing him how to think critically. Here are a few ways you can be a logic coach for your child.
Make Your Child More Important Than TV
When you talk with your child, you have an opportunity to show her how logic works, and when it doesn't. Unfortunately, talking with one's children doesn't seem to be happening a great deal these days.
In her excellent book, Raising Lifelong Learners, Lydia Bellino quotes Jim Trelease, the author of The Read Aloud Handbook in pointing out that "the average adult in this country spends 6 hours a week shopping and 30 hours a week watching the television, in contrast to daily time spent in one-to-one conversation in homes with school-age children. One-to-one conversation averaged 9.5 minutes for at-home mothers, 10.7 for working mothers, and less for fathers." Bellino rhetorically asks why we can't find time to talk with our children and then answers this way:
Part of the reason is that by the time our toddlers are of school age, we take their talk for granted. We have turned all our attention to their reading and writing, not realizing that talk is still the motor that propels their intellectual development. It is through talk that children learn to follow and tell stories, understand logical sequences, recognize causes, anticipate consequences, explore options, and consider motives. It is through talk that our children learn about barometers, mortgages, civil rights, psychotherapy, and the Roman Empire. It is through talk that our children learn that their observations, hunches, and insights are interesting and worth developing. It is through talk that our children learn about empathy, generosity, forgiveness—about walking a mile in another person's moccasins. Talk matters, and it's not happening enough in our homes.
Are you willing to talk more with your child so that she can not only learn about "barometers, mortgages, civil rights, psychotherapy, and the Roman Empire," but also how to think actively and use the power of logic to understand what she is being taught and how to solve problems? If you are, read on for a way to intentionally teach clear thinking.
Challenge Your Own Assumptions
What I ask you to do in this reason-teaching suggestion is not going to be easy. I ask you, together with your child, to enter a journey of reasonoing by looking clearly at your own assumptions. I admit this isn't easy because honestly exploring decisions we've already made can be disturbing to our mind's status quo. So don't take this approach if you think it's dangerous to ask a lot of questions and if you aren't willing to confront your most treasured beliefs, customs, opinions, and privileges.
However, if you are willing to move beyond the comfortable boundaries within which you ordinarily operate, this approach stands a good chance of helping you help your child learn how to think clearly and honestly about a wide variety of issues—from the personal to the political, from the philosophical to the practical.
It is impossible not to share your perspective on life with your child. In comments both casual and serious you state your opinion on lots of topics. You tell your children that you believe in evolution, or that you believe in creationism. You tell them that Democrats are responsible for the mess we're in today, or that Republicans are. You tell them that it's okay to use marijuana when you turn eighteen, or that pot is never good under any circumstances. You tell them that the war in Iraq was justified, or that it wasn't.
What you probably fail to tell them is why you believe what you do. It's easy to assume that your children understand the reasoning that went into your opinions. But they haven't had your experiences. They haven't had the opportunities in life to weigh the relative benefits of one point of view over another.
However, if you do more than simply give your child your opinion, if you share with her how difficult it is to evaluate conflicting points of view, if you show her that arriving at conclusions takes some effort, and if you help her carefully examine the statistics and facts that people use to sway someone to their side, she will discover that there are almost always several legitimate points of view. She will realize that life is complex and not black and white, no matter how much we would like it to be otherwise.
I call this way of teaching clear reasoning the "why, what, where, when, who, and how" approach. Socrates thought why's were a good way toward self-discovery and if you give this method a try, I believe you will agree that it's helpful as a tool in teaching logic.
It works this way. Sometime in the next few days when you're eating dinner, or after dinner when the TV is off, tell your child that you believe it's important she understand why you have the perspective on life that you do. Then choose a topic to discuss that would be of interest to her and explore it as thoroughly as possible using the self-questions below.
This approach involves giving more than a simple "why" as to what you believe. For example, if you say, "I believe such-and-such because it's always seemed like a good position," you haven't explained the logic behind your opinion. Instead, after giving your opinion, use the following series of questions:
 Why do I believe my position is correct?
What supports this reason?
How is my answer to the last question consistent with my experiences?
Where do I find clear evidence for my perspective?
Whose opinion do I most respect on this matter?
Why?
What is the most significant argument on the other side of the issue?
Why do I feel that way?
Are there any other questions I can ask or areas I can explore to dig more deeply into the reasons why I feel this position is better than another?
You may be surprised how pursuing a topic until you are clear of the validity of your opinion broadens your understanding of other points of view.
If you need some ideas of topics, here are a few:
What is your criteria for determining if someone is or is not patriotic?
How do you define "evil" and when do the mistakes that humans make turn them into "evil" people?
How do you define "winning" and "success?"
A company that makes a product requires help from many people. There are the designers of the product, the workers on the assembly line, the sales persons, the shareholders who provide capital for development, etc. How would you distribute profits of the company so they realistically reflect the contribution of each group?
Make certain your child learns the basics of government and other institutions
From the moment your child is able to vote, he will be asked to choose political leaders who will make decisions affecting not only the more mundane aspects of life, but more serious ones dealing with world politics and the war on terrorism. One of the questions he will need to understand is this: How can democracies eradicate extremist violence without sacrificing human and civil rights? The answer your child gives to that question relies in large part on how well he understands the rights accorded us by our constitution.
It has been reported that Peter Jennings, a Canadian who came to love the United States and became a citizen here, always carried a copy of the constitution with him in his pocket. He had a firm foundation for understanding the news he reported.
Unfortunately, many of the rest of us are woefully lacking in our knowledge of the documents upon which this country was founded. In the Los Angeles Times on Feb. 6, 2005, Milly Selvin wrote a commentary titled "We the People, Ignorant and Tuned Out." In it she notes:
Americans have become constitutional dunces. Or neo-totalitarians. It's hard to say which. Ignorance and oppression tend to go hand in hand. For instance: A new million-dollar survey by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation found that almost a third of high school students, upon hearing the actual text of the 1st Amendment, thinks it goes "too far." Wonder why so many high school administrators have so few qualms about squashing campus newspapers' free speech?
Another recent survey found that two out of three Americans believe that Karl Marx's blueprint for communism—"from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"—is part of this nation's defining document. And in yet another survey, six out of 10 Americans failed to name all three branches of government and fewer than one in 10 could name all four rights guaranteed by the 1st Amendment.
If we don't know the basic foundations by which we are governed, it is hard to logically evaluate ballot propositions or fully understand arguments for or against important social issues. The less we know, the easier it is to rely on someone else to tell us what to think. If we know more, we might discover the person we relied on for advice based his opinion on false logic and lack of information.
You will be a first-rate logic coach if you make certain your child (and you) are familiar with how our government was founded and what makes it run.
Since I began this article with cartoons poking fun at our tendency to give knee-jerk responses to complex issues, I want to end with another cartoon I found very humorous and sadly typical. This is a "Bizarro" cartoon by Don Pirarro where a woman eating pretzels and a man with a drink in his hand are sitting on the sofa and passively watching television. The voice from the TV says, "WARNING: The following program contains facts that will challenge the self-centered fantasies and bigotries you now hold. For your comfort, AMERICAN IDOL is playing on another channel."
BY ARLENE F. HARDER, MA, MFT |
What is your goal?