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Principle 18. Children must learn not to lean too heavily on their own reasoning. Reasoning is good for logically demonstrating mathematical truth, but unreliable when judging ideas because our reasoning will justify all kinds of erroneous ideas if we really want to believe them.

Principle 19. Knowing that reason is not to be trusted as the final authority in forming opinions, children must learn that their greatest responsibility is choosing which ideas to accept or reject. Good habits of behavior and lots of knowledge will provide the discipline and experience to help them do this.

Every person who is stopped in their tracks by witnessing their own reason in action is as much of a discoverer as Columbus. We normally let reason do its own work without really even being aware of it. But there are times when we stand in startled admiration as we watch our reason unfold arguments point by point in favor of buying one carpet instead of another, or defending our old friend against some rival. We see every argument that our reason presents for something opposed with another argument in the background. How else can we explain that there is no one subject that two people won't have very different opinions about--food, dress, games, education, politics, religion? The two people have opposite opinions, and each of them has infallible arguments that would convince the other--if he didn't have arguments just as valid to

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strengthen his own opinion. Every character in history and literature illustrates this. Probably the best way to train children to reason intelligently is to let them work out opposing opinions in their own minds and decide for themselves which has more validity.

Shakespeare's Macbeth returned as a conquering general after a brilliant victory. His head and heart were inflated. Was there anything he couldn't accomplish? Couldn't he govern a kingdom as easily as he had governed his army? His reason outlines some logical steps for him to accomplish great things--but the methods for doing them aren't all honorable. And just then, he meets the 'weird sisters,' who illustrate the way we all fall into fatalism when our conscience can't condone our actions. As he contemplates the prophecy of becoming Thane of Cawdor, he receives word that he is the Thane of Cawdor! He is also prophesied to be king. If it's decreed, how can he change it? He is no longer a free agent, he is merely a victim of fate. And many logical arguments present themselves to him, convincing him that Scotland, the world, his wife, himself, will be enhanced and flourish and be blessed if he has the opportunity to carry out the plans within himself. Opportunity? He's already been promised the opportunity, the thing is decreed. All he needs to do is figure out what steps to take to make it come to pass. He had a sensitive nature and shrank from the horrors he vaguely foresaw in the future. But reason stepped in and played out the whole bloody tragedy in a vision to his mind. At the beginning of the play, Macbeth has honors, lots of friends, and the trust of his king. The change is sudden and complete, and reason justified every step of the way. But, although reason convinced him during the process, it didn't begin with reason. His will had been tempted with ambition and had already accepted the concept of his own ascent to power and greatness even before the 'weird sisters' shaped his inner desire into prophecy. If his own will hadn't already opened his mind to ambition, then prophecies of fate couldn't have influenced his actions any more than they influenced Banquo's.

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But that doesn't mean that reason is totally unworthy and always giving bad counsel. Nurse Cavell, Jack Coruwell, Lord Roberts, General Gordon, Madame Curie, are all examples of people whose reason led them to glorious deeds. We know how Florence Nightingale was obsessed with the feeling of pity. She welcomed it and reasoned it out, and was led through many difficulties in her work of saving sick, suffering soldiers in her country's army. She was even able to convince those in power with the same arguments that her own reason had used on her. The medieval church had a wonderful thought when they presented the foundational idea of each of the seven Liberal Arts by having each one represented by a person who was great in that field and who could convince others with the same reason that had convinced themselves. [I think this is referring to the Santa Maria Novella fresco in Florence]. Thus, Priscian is represented as being the one through whom grammar came to the world, Pythagoras is represented as teaching the world arithmetic, and Euclid represents the science that he applied his reason to. But reason isn't just for great intellectual advances, or discoveries, or events that change the world for good or evil. There is no gadget we use, great or small, that some person hasn't exhausted his reason on. A sofa, a chest of drawers, a box of toy soldiers, have all been thought out step by step. The inventor had to consider the pros and work out the cons to make his invention practical enough to be useful. Hardly anyone ever takes time to consider how the useful, or even beautiful item, came into existence. It's good to sometimes ask a child, 'How did you think of this?' when he tells you about a new game he's just made up, or a country he's named in his imagination, complete with people and a government. He'll probably tell you what first put the idea into his head, and then how he reasoned it out step by step. And after he's considered the question, 'How did you think of it?' it will occur to him to ask the same of other inventions--

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'How did he think of it?' And then he'll understand that there's a distinction between the first spark of inspiration that puts the idea into someone's head, and the reasoned steps that go into completing the object, or making the discovery, or writing a law. Sometimes a child should even be exposed to the psychology of a crime. He needs to see how reason can bring what looks like infallible proofs about how right the crime is. From Cain to the most recent convict, every crime has been justified in the opinions of every perpetrator by reasoned arguments that come all by themselves into their minds. We know the arguments that convinced Eve to eat the fruit when the serpent persuaded her like the weird sisters persuaded Hamlet. It's pleasant to look at, delicious, and it will make you wise so that you know right from wrong. Those are good, convincing arguments, deceptive enough to stand up to the protestations of Obedience. Children need to know that they will face this, too. Any time they're tempted to do the wrong thing, good reasons for doing it will occur to them. But, fortunately, when they want to do the right thing, reasons that are just as convincing will also appear.

After lots of experience in reasoning and following the process of reason in others either in real life or in their books, children will be ready to conclude that reasonable isn't the same as right. Reason is their servant, not their master. It's just one of the servants that helps to govern his 'kingdom of Mansoul.' But reason shouldn't be trusted to govern a man, much less a nation, any more than appetite, or ambition, or love of comfort. Logical reasons can be brought forward to prove a wrong course of action as easily as a good course of action. He'll see that reason works involuntarily. All the nice-sounding arguments follow one after another in his mind without any action from him. But that doesn't mean that he's a helpless victim hurried into sin by thoughts he couldn't help, because it never starts with reason. It starts when he allows himself to contemplate some

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course of action, like Eve standing by the fruit tree. That's when reason enters the picture. So, if he chooses to think about doing a thing that's good, then lots of logical reasons will rush into his head to convince him to do it. But if he chooses to entertain a wrong notion, it's like summoning reason to present a whole lot of logical arguments why the wrong thing is really a good idea.

Recognizing what Reason's job is should be a tremendous help to all of us in these days when fallacy is everywhere, and when our desire to be agreeable makes us willing to buy into public opinion about things, especially when those opinions are shared by people we respect. It's also good to remember that no wrong has ever been done, no crime has ever been committed that wasn't justified in the mind of the perpetrator with so many sound arguments from his own reason in such numbers that he couldn't oppose them. Has Shakespeare ever been wrong? Perhaps, in the case of Richard III, who recognized his own villainy and not only accepted it, but gloated over it. That's hardly human nature. But at least he wasn't a hypocrite! Richard may be the only exception to the rule--most men, when finally confronted with their own villainy, go out and hang themselves. Even Richard says at the end, 'I myself can't even find pity for myself.' It's enough for us and our children to know that reason will make any matter we propose look good and acceptable. Just because we're convinced that we're right doesn't justify anything, because there's no theory or action we can contemplate that our reason can't affirm. We can convince ourselves with many 'proofs' that Bacon really wrote the Shakespeare plays, and some ingenious person has devised an elaborate string of arguments that prove that Dr. [Samuel] Johnson wrote the Bible! And why shouldn't that be a valid opinion? Considering that

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France is known as a nation of logical thinkers, they made a curious blunder when they elected to give divine honors to the Goddess of Reason. But maybe they did it because they're a nation of logical thinkers. After all, logic is very close to reason, and just because something can be proved by logic, that doesn't make it true or right. It's no wonder that two equally honorable and virtuous men from any place will hold opposite opinions on almost any issue, and each will support his views with logical arguments. So we have people who cling to dogma in religion, and politicians who sway voters with emotional sentiments, and those whose understanding of science is nothing but dreams, and those who hope to stay one step ahead by keeping current with the latest popular opinions. But that won't happen to us if we've been raised to understand that reason is beautiful and a marvel, but that it has its limits.

We need to be able to counter popular current opinion, not with logical counter-arguments, but by exposing fallacy and then proving the merit of the correct position. For example, Karl Marx, who has been described as 'a very lovable, very exasperating, sincere but misguided zealot,' dominates today's socialist thinking. Point by point, for better or worse, his Marxian Manifesto of 1848 is gaining popularity. We are told that, 'the following measures might become general practice in the most advanced countries:'

1. 'Property and rent income will pass to the State.' We don't have time to examine this proposition in detail, but let's consider a single fallacy. It's assumed that rent income lines the pockets of property owners. But the records of the Duke of Bedford, to name just one example, shows that rent from his park property is barely enough to maintain the property and pay property taxes.

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Landowners generally employ many workers with fair pay and benefits, and most provide a public service by making their property a beautiful park for public use, maintained out of their own pocket.

2. 'Heavy progressive taxes.' The fallacy is this: the poorest working class citizens who are supposed to be helped by the Manifesto will have to pay taxes because they make up the bulk of society. In other words, the ones who will be most burdened by heavy progressive taxes will be the poor working class, whose very existence will be threatened as a result, as has happened in Russia.

3. 'Abolish all inheritance.' This is suppose to reduce everyone to the same economic level. Of course, eliminating class is the main aim of socialism. But the fallacy is the assumption that class is a permanent, stable thing. But, in truth, classes fluctuate like particles in ocean waves moving upward and downward with the tides. The man at the bottom of society may be at the top tomorrow, as we see in Soviet Russia and all other civilized countries. Trying to control this natural fluctuation of classes is like King Canute trying to tell the tide not to rise.

4. 'Confiscate property of rebels and emigrants.' It takes tyranny to maintain assumed authority. And the worst tyranny of all is penalizing people to intimidate them into powerlessness, as they do in the Soviet state. The fallacy here is in underestimating human nature. There is nothing that men won't sacrifice for an idea. Threat of losing property won't keep men from taking a stand for a grand idea, like freedom to think and move with liberty.

5, 6, and 7. deal with transferring factories and tools for producing things into the hands of the State. Since the Proletariat [the working class] makes up the government in a communist society, it's a way for Everyman to control all the wealth and means of getting wealth.

This is actually a logically thought-out similarity to

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a government of the people, by the people, for the people. But the fallacy here is that it results in a revolution that doesn't really bring any changes. It just results in a change of rulers, who might end up being better or worse. In the Soviet Republic, according to the law of perpetual social flux, new tyrants would work their way in because there are no longer precedents and customs in place to hinder them. And the children will have a great example of how the last stage of their country is worse than it was before.

8. 'All will be forced to work.' The original idea was to grant equal freedom and living conditions to everyone. But in reality, it means that everyone will have to serve in the army.

9. 'Agriculture and manufacture will be combined into one group.' The goal was to take away the difference and inequalities between towns and rural areas. It's a good idea, one we'd all like to see happen. But is it really possible?

10. 'Free public education for all children.' We are happy to see that this has come to pass with the added condition, 'for those who need or want it.' The downside is that the Soviet's concept of education is brainwashing the next generation in revolutionary propaganda.

To continue our examination of point number 10., the next clause (b) gets rid of child labor in factories 'in its present form.' We are glad to see child labor ended, but that clause could leave a loophole for something just as sinister. But, on the surface, everyone seems happy with this point.

(c) 'Education and production of goods will be united.' Motivated by motives of economy, England is copying this

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communist trend with its Continuation Schools. The fallacy affects us as well as them in our efforts to better educate the people. It assumes that a child who learns a specific trade at the expense of his overall academic education will do better in the future than a child who spends all his school time on educating his whole person. But employers themselves don't confirm this. On the contrary, if a child is fairly bright and willing, an employer will be happy to have him and can teach him the specific skills he needs on the job. The purpose of education isn't to train for a technical skill, it's to develop the whole person. The more fully a person meets his potential, the better his work will be, no matter what that work is. Like I said before, the concept of British Continuation Schools should be teaching humanities. By that, I don't mean a traditional classical education. Whether ancient classics are the best really isn't the issue. But our English language has a wealth of its own rich humanities to offer.

These ten maxims give us plenty of material--not for lectures, but for discussion. This gives an example of how current events should be used as opportunities to talk with our children. This kind of thing should be a part of the school curriculum. Students need to know how to follow an argument and detect fallacies for themselves [rather than accepting our opinions and arguments.] Just like every other function of the mind, reason needs raw material to work on, whether it comes in history or literature, or news of a strike or revolution. It's crazy to send youths out to face a confusing world with nothing but one specialized skill, such as the ability to solve math problems. An education that only trains a child to reason has its uses, but, really, children already have that ability. What they need is material to practice on.

A word of warning: reason, like everything else in a person, is subject to habit. It works on what it's used to handling.

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Plato formed a fair judgment about this when he wrote about Education of the Young in his Republic [read an essay/overview here] and perceived that math wouldn't help in the complex affairs of life, whether public or private.

I've shown why students' reading and current events need to be wide enough to provide opportunities for them to enjoy the kind of logical, methodical reasoning they need. When they find fallacies in one instance, it will sharpen their ability to detect them somewhere else.

Does that mean we should spend lots of time discussing every frivolous or profane premise they come across? Of course not. But we should give them some principles to help them identify what's frivolous or profane for themselves. A premise is idle and frivolous when it rests on a foundation of nothing and leads nowhere. And a premise is profane and blasphemous sin when it's irreverent and flippant towards God. We all know, without anyone telling us, that God is terrifying, wonderful, loving, just and good, as surely as we know that the sun shines or the wind blows. Children should be brought up understanding that a miracle is no less miraculous because it happens so continually and regularly that we call it a law of nature. For instance, sap rising in a tree, a boy born with his uncle's eyes, an answer we can identify comes to us while we pray in earnest. These things aren't any less amazing because they happen frequently, or even all the time, so that we take them for granted and cease to wonder about them anymore. That's the way it was for the people of Jerusalem when Jesus did so many miracles in their streets.

The guiding principle that should control people and countries is, 'My Father never stops working, so why should I?' [John 5:17, NLT] 'My Spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time' is a dire warning to every individual and every nation. God and Jesus work every day to hinder people and nations from doing the wrong thing and encourage them to do good. To the child

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who understands this, miracles won't be so unusual because all of life will seem like something full of wonder and adoration.

If we want our children not to get confused by all the trends and thoughts about religion, then we need to help them understand exactly what religion is. In What Religion Is, Bernard Bosanquet wrote:

'Will religion guarantee me happiness? Generally, we have to say, no. If we become a Christian just to attain personal happiness then we definitely won't find happiness.'

Here is a final and clear answer to the psuedo-Christianity that's offered so often to hesitating souls. It promises physical comfort, no more sorrow or anxiety, replacement of what's been lost, even going so far as to offer reuniting with loved ones who have died. We might call on mediums, go to séances, visit faith healers and put our faith in some man who only wants to manipulate us. We don't worry about sin or feel remorse for our past. We might live detestable lives, yet be satisfied and content with ourselves, totally oblivious to the anxiety and struggle of those around us. We think that we can will away sin, sorrow, worry and suffering through faith. In other words, we think that Christianity will guarantee us personal happiness. We use religion to make ourselves immune to every distress and misery of life, and we believe that this wonderful immunity is within the power of our own will. 'The only person who matters in my Christianity is me, and the only purpose for religion is to keep me from any physical or mental discomfort and keep me floating in some cloud of undisturbed Nirvana.' Is that what Christianity is? We must agree with Professor Bosanquet: absolutely NOT! Real Christianity isn't about me, and any religion that does these things is idolatry, self-worship, concerned with nobody but myself.

To continue our quote:

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'If religion doesn't guarantee my happiness, then what does it do? We value religion as being good and great, but if it doesn't do anything for me, then why should it be anything to me? But the answer changes if you word the question just a bit differently and ask, 'does it make my life more worth living?' And the answer to this is, 'It's the only thing that makes life worth living at all!'

In other words, 'I want, am made for and must have a God.'

Since children have a sweet faith and pure love, they have immediate access to God. Is there anything better than that? What more could a person desire? Children have complete trust that gentle Jesus is always with them, wherever they go, even while they sleep. Angels care for them and they enjoy all the immunities of the Kingdom. They have as much Reason as anyone else. A hundred years ago, there was a simple, straightforward way to give children a foundation for their faith. All the tenets of Christianity were outlined in a little catechism of 'Scripture Proofs.' That method had its good points. But today, if we use Scripture as our authority, we first have to prove that Scripture itself can be trusted. We also have to change tactics. We need to make it clear to children that the most important things of life can't be proved with conclusive evidence. We can't even prove without a doubt that we're living! So we must cling to what we know is true and doesn't need proof. We also know with conclusive certainty that our reason isn't infallible. It's susceptible to persuasion and open to influence from either side. It's a faithful, yet simple servant--whatever the will decides to accept, it can find ways to prove it. When we understand that our reason can be unreliable, we'll be able to detect the flawed bias of our opponent's arguments. And we'll be less likely to be confused and persuaded by every new notion that comes our way. Every mother has faced the intense logic of a child who asks very logical but difficult questions and has drawn the wrong conclusion. So we

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know they're not too young to deal with serious matters, but only as they come up. Our first priority is giving them a sense of reassurance, not boring or distressing them with the complex questions of life.

Children can drive us crazy arguing a trivial point to death just because they enjoy using their reasoning power. Yet many dislike the very school subjects that seem like they'd give an outlet for their reasoning ability, and might even strengthen it. But very few children enjoy grammar, especially English grammar, which depends so little on inflection. Arithmetic and Math don't appeal to most children, either, no matter how intelligent. Most children are baffled by math, although they may love reasoning out questions of life in literature or history. Since so many dislike those subjects, maybe we should take that as a hint and stop putting so much pressure on those subjects. It would make sense to push grammar and math if children's reason was waiting for us to develop it. But when we see that they have plenty of ability to reason in other subjects, we have to face the fact that they have plenty of reason. They have as much ability to reason as they have ability to love. They don't need us to give them subjects to develop their reason. Our job is to give them lots of material for their reason to work on. If their reason gets sharper, it will be a side effect as they learn their other subjects. At the same time, we can't let them skip grammar and math. Some day they'll delight in language, and in the beauty of the most appropriate words to express a thought. They'll see that words are the vehicle of truth, and shouldn't be carelessly thrown around, or mutilated when written. We need to prepare them for that day. We should probably wait before we have them parse sentences until they're used to analyzing whether they make sense. We should let them play with figures of speech

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before making them try to break sentences down to small parts. We should keep proper grammatical terms to a minimum. The truth is, children can't really draw conclusions about abstract things. They're good at busily collecting particulars, but they don't commit themselves to deducing anything definite, and we shouldn't rush them. And if language has its own confounding rules, imagine how much more baffling it is for children to work with abstract lines and mathematical figures! We remember how John Ruskin amazed and taught us with his thesis that two and two make four, and the universe has no way of ever making two and two equal three or five. Children should approach math from the perspective of that unalterable law. They should understand how impressive it was when Euclid said that two and two equals three or five is an absurd possibility, as absurd as a man claiming that, on his tree, apples fell upwards. It's absurd to think that apples would break the law of gravity. Figures and abstract lines work just like an apple falling. They are confined to an unchangeable law. It's a great thing to understand the nature of these kinds of laws by experiencing them in their lowest application, gravity. A child who understands how immutable the laws of math are will never divide 15 pennies between five people and give them the wrong amount. He will understand that math answers aren't arbitrary, they're logical, and even a child can use reason to come to the right answer. Math can be enjoyable for a person who loves perceiving a law of nature and figuring out the law behind why things work the way they do. But not every child can be a star wrestler, and not every boy 'takes' to math. So perhaps teachers should make it their duty to expose the child to as many interests as possible. Math is just one subject in education, and it's one that not everyone excels at. So it shouldn't monopolize too much time in the school day. And youths shouldn't be denied good jobs because the subject they're the worst at is one

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that test examiners love. They probably love it because the answers are final and easy to grade. There are no essay questions to have to make subjective judgments about.

We want to send youths out into the world with 'solid reasoning powers, stable will, endurance, preparedness, strength and skill.' [She Was a Phantom of Delight, Wordsworth] To those qualities we should add determination. We can hardly expect to turn out such a person of character from a steady course in only one discipline, such as mathematics.

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