Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.
Do you ever worry about how your children will fare out in the real world? How they’ll know truth from fiction, reality from warped perspectives, and differentiate between what’s an opinion and what’s a sales pitch? This ability plays a role in everything from understanding the news to the weekly sermon to buying a car or house. It affects your choices in small and big ways in every way, every day of your life.
That’s why I’m loving The Fallacy Detective from Hans Bluedorn! This fantastic book will teach your students to do all of the above in really fun ways.
I have the workbook edition, and it’s a softcover book slightly bigger than a mass market paperback. The inside pages are grayscale and consist of 38 lessons. Each lesson is short – usually not more than three pages or so – and contains very straightforward, direct information. Most lessons include a short comic, breaking apart the text, both illustrating the point and adding an element of fun to it.
Each lesson also includes an ‘exercise.’ Most of the time this consists of a short series of multiple-choice questions. The others are short answer. For all of the questions within a certain lesson, the point is for the student to identify to the strategy being taught within that specific lesson. This provides for immediate assessment and feedback. If your student doesn’t understand the lesson, you’ll be able to tell at this point.
The Fallacy Detective can be used as one-half to one high school credit. I think this is a really fun way to learn important skills and earn valuable credit! You could do this multiple ways:
If you have only one student, s/he could read the lesson and do the exercises independently. The teacher could check the written work in the book, and with good understanding, that could be all that is needed.
However, the exercises were intended to be discussed, so you could tackle this course another way. If you still only have one student, you could enter the conversation as the teacher. Allow your student to read the lesson independently and tackle the exercises, but then have a joint discussion about them.
Of course, if you have multiple students, even better! They could still read the lesson independently or read it together. Then, after a few minutes to review the exercises, hold a class or family discussion about each one. This will allow you not only to see who understands the concepts well but will also allow everyone to consider new perspectives.
You could even make this bigger than your family. If you have enough students, this would make a wonderful class for a co-op or learning group. Meeting once per week for an hour’s discussion would easily give you the required time to earn a half credit, and if you added homework and reading time, a credit should be very doable.
As we’re having a bit of a wonky summer and our schedule is out of whack, we’ve done a mixture of several of the above. My kids have been reading independently. Sometimes we discuss it together, sometimes they do the work on their own. I love the flexibility that this program provides!
Having studied Aristotle a bit in school, I love that many of the concepts within this book are based on his work. He had a huge body of work, so The Fallacy Detective concentrates on just logical fallacies.
This includes things like red herrings, avoiding the question, circular reasoning, generalizations, and analagies. These are all really important things to learn, and I love how clearly they’re presented. My favorite chapter, though, is the last one.
The last chapter is all about propaganda. While we’ve talked about this as a family and in book club, I appreciate how clearly and logically this series of lessons progresses. There are many practical applications for the information in this section, and I’m thankful that it’s included.
I’ve really enjoyed our work with The Fallacy Detective, and my students are going to continue with it to earn their credit. It’s a great and fun way to learn necessary skills while simultaneously working to complete high school requirements. Don’t take my word for it, though – click on the graphic below to read other reviews from the Homeschool Review Crew.
