Logical Thinking for Kids

How do you teach a kid to think logically? After all, logical thinking cuts across disciplines. It doesn’t fit neatly into any particular subject at school…

I’ve always felt civics would be a great subject to teach kids to think logically. Is a Presidential system better? Or is the Westminister model better? Or is there a combo of the two that would be better than either? What’s the right tenure for a head of state? This is the kind of topic that can lead to debates and discussions, which if moderated well, can force kids to understand the pros and cons of different systems, and to dig up how countries have fared under the different systems. And why compromises are made in deciding a form of government.

Economics is another candidate. Are monopolies bad by definition? Or is a monopoly bad only when it abuses its monopoly status? Is socialism sustainable in the long term? How is socialism tied to population demographics?

But ok, civics and economics come a bit later in a kid’s life. Is there any way that could be used for smaller kids? From my 5 year old daugther’s experience, I’d say Yes. A couple of years back, I took a torch light (sun) and two balloons (earth and moon) and tried explaining the concept of an eclipse to her. Here is how that explanation ended:

“Are you saying the earth is round?”

 “Yes.”

 “Can’t be. If I stand on a ball, I fall off. How then could we stand on a round earth?”

That’s logical thinking. I couldn’t think of a way to explain gravity to her then, so I let it go. But any time an eclipse happens on a TV show or story, she’ll say that its because the moon came between the sun and the earth, adding smugly, “Why are they scared? Don’t they know that?”

Then she started noticing that Discovery and National Geographic would show the earth as being round whenever they showed the meteorite hurtling through space on its way to wipe out her beloved dinosaurs. Her question to me was, “If they are showing it to be round, it must be right. But how can it be?” (Sidebar: parents lie and/or don’t know much; but the TV must be right).

And then recently she told me that she’d heard that kids in America play when it’s night time here and sleep when it’s day time for us. How can that be? Are they crazy? This time when I drew a pic of the sun and (round) earth with America and India on opposite sides, she got it immediately. It was logical: when one side gets sunlight, the other side doesn’t!

Bottomline, I guess kids can get thinking logically if someone (parents, teachers) is willing to answer questions they ask. As the answers accumulate, they’ll either line up or contradict each other; and the kid will spot the contradiction, provided they are allowed and encouraged to speak up.

Next stop on this logical thinking train with my daughter is the topic of DNA! It came up when she wanted to know why mosquitoes don’t die out even though we spray stuff to kill them. Ah, I said, it’s because they mutate. Or as I put it in terms she gets, it’s because the “instructions to build mosquitoes” change to make them immune to whatever it is we are spraying. Further, I added, those instructions are in the same language for all life forms but the words are different for different species. I already find that having taught her the concept of DNA is proving useful as I try to answer her next question:

“How did the first parent/child come? And no, I don’t want any Adam/Eve story, I want the real answer.”

Even though my first stab at the answer didn’t get through, I still have the win that she doesn’t confuse myths with explanations.