Learn to Be Reasonable: What Should Be Learned from American Basic Education

Reasonable thought is a characteristic of democratic society while unreasonable ideas often originate from autocracy, gain popularity in an autocratic society and even become the standard in autocratic government policy. As for social function, the reasoning ability of students is necessary to protect democratic public lifestyle; in terms of citizens’ quality, this ability can improve liberal education.

A few years back, a professor told me that China was seriously lacking in public intellect, and he wanted to publish a writing textbook for college students that would strengthen their basic reasoning ability. Public reasoning is an achievement of civilization, and it is also an essential condition for social relationships and democratic political order. Only if it is a reasonable society can it be an upright, forgiving society. Logic and reasoning among the common public are the results not only of knowledge but also of habit, and habits need to be formed from childhood. Once a man has missed the time when it was easy to form ways of thinking and speaking habits, he will find it very difficult to form them later on, even if he engages in further education.

How can we develop the habit of reasoning? Let’s take American public education as an example.

In American public schools, analysis lessons start from the first grade in primary school, even though it is not explicitly mentioned during the lower grades. For example, in the reading and language arts framework for the public schools in California for kindergarten through the 12th grade there are detailed requirement for the five grades in elementary school. Students should be able to: “retell the central ideas of simple literary passages” in first grade; restate facts and details in the text to clarify and organize ideas” in second grade; “distinguish the main idea and supporting details in expository text” in third grade; “distinguish between cause and effect and between fact and opinion” in literature in fourth grade; and separate facts, “supported inferences and opinions” in text in fifth grade. Expository critique is only mentioned specifically after the fifth grade.

From the fifth grade on, expository critique is required for the rest of secondary education, and the sixth grade is an important period. On the basis of the fifth grade, there are systematic requirements: “to determine the adequacy and appropriateness of the evidence for an author’s conclusions; make reasonable assertions about a text through accurate, supporting citations; note instances of unsupported inferences, fallacious reasoning, persuasion and propaganda in text.”

While teaching, there are two parts in the expository critique. The first is to analyze faulty reasoning, and the second is to screen out propaganda. There are five types of faulty reasoning: overgeneralizations, cherry-picking the evidence, circular reasoning, false dichotomy and non sequitur. And there are 10 types of propaganda: bandwagon, name-calling, stereotyping, lesser of two evils, plain folks, big lie, card stacking, testimonial, appeal to fear and transfer. These two parts are combined as logical fallacies since propaganda itself is a way to mislead people by taking advantage of weaknesses in most people. Students can understand these two items better by perceiving concrete examples while reading.

For the sixth grade, the focal point is to “determine the adequacy and appropriateness of the evidence for an author’s conclusions.” Evidence is publicly known fact while someone’s conclusions are just personal views. Not all conclusions can automatically be right — they need to be proven. And here “to be proven” means to persuade and to tell people clearly why the conclusions are correct, so conclusions need to be supported with reasons. There are four common sources of reasons: fact, example, data and expert opinion.

Expository critique emphasizes two of a student’s prerequisite skills. The first is identifying whether there is adequate and appropriate evidence. For example, “Lincoln was an American President,” is obviously correct whereas the “conclusion,” “Lincoln was a great President,” needs to be reasoned about and discussed in order to be confirmed. The second is distinguishing conclusions substantiated with ample and appropriate evidence from those which are not substantiated. For example, adjectives such as “circular,” “European,” “wooden,” “toxic” and so on are substantiated while “beautiful,” “ugly,” “great” and “awesome” are not. In other words, evidence-based writing says “please check it,” but unsupported conclusions say “I’m right, just right.” Evidence-based writing is modest and consulting; unfounded conclusions are arrogant.

The seventh grade’s literary analysis requires students to “assess the adequacy, accuracy and appropriateness of the author’s evidence to support claims and assertions, noting instances of bias and stereotyping.” “Bias” and “stereotyping” are new factors, which are also turning formal logic into social logic. In the eighth grade, students are required to review the relevant contents of grade six and seven, emphasizing evaluating the “unity, coherence, logic, internal consistency and structural patterns of a text.”

Reading material for the seventh and eighth grades is deeper than that of the sixth grade, and the fallacies to be analyzed are also more complicated. For instance, there are American classic works in the text of the eighth grade. When reading the works of Edgar Allan Poe, there is a reasoning review of his novels. This review claims that all of his novels are about idiots, scholars or crazy people. The teachers will tell students that this is hasty generalization — a type of fallacy in which words such as “every,” “all,” “everyone,” “always” and so on are always used. The review also says that an emotionally healthy writer would not write such stories, since a sane person does not know what it feels like to be crazy, which is a false dichotomy (either crazy or not crazy). In fact, the writer can write about craziness by using imagination, and he himself does not need to be crazy. The review also says that, “as we all know,” writers are all a little weird — those who write horror stories in particular. The problem in using phrases like “as we all know,” “undoubtedly,” “everyone knows” and so on is that the so-called common knowledge needs to be proven.

Literary analysis in high school requires students to obtain an even stronger ability. There are two periods in high school. The first one is from ninth to 10th grade, and it emphasizes the need “to critique the logic of functional documents by examining the sequence of information and procedures in anticipation of possible reader misunderstandings.” Also important are evaluating “the credibility of an author’s argument or defense of a claim by critiquing the relationship between generalizations and evidence, the comprehensiveness of evidence, and the way in which the author’s intent affects the structure and tone of the text (e.g., in professional journals, editorials, political speeches and primary source material).”

The second period is from 11th to 12th grade, in which analyses are conducted of public documents. It requires students to critique the following: “the power, validity and truthfulness of arguments set forth in public documents; their appeal to both friendly and hostile audiences; and the extent to which the arguments anticipate and address reader concerns and counterclaims (e.g., appeal to reason, authority, pathos and emotion).”

In many colleges, essay writing is a required course for freshman majoring in either the arts or the sciences. A year-long writing course is often required in many colleges: the first semester emphasizes the writing abilities of describing, narrating, comparing, persuading, arguing and criticizing; the second semester focuses on essay writing, which is also known as analysis and research. College students need to write essays in just about every course, and essay writing helps students improve their relating and analyzing abilities in terms of both professional writing and social life.

All in all, in American schools there is a continual process of education about analytical ability from primary school to high school and even into college. The analytical course is a 10-year-long required course beginning in the fourth grade. And the middle school period is especially important, since the learning abilities, curiosity and thirst for knowledge are strong for students at that age. As a result, students are apt to absorb knowledge and turn it into habit. The reason why most American people have rather high-quality, independent elaborative faculties and social rationality is that the United States is a country with democratic traditions that also pays great attention to education.

The writer of this article is a professor in the English Department of Saint Mary’s College in California, USA.

*Editor’s note: The original quotations above are taken from the “English-Language Arts Content Standards for California: Kindergarten through Grade Twelve” from the California State Department of Education.