My book Logic for Kids, just published, opens with the following comment (p. xiii):

Logical reasoning is a requirement in school subjects generally and not just math and science. Textbooks, however, assume that students are able to reason logically without special instruction and make no effort to provide it. When they do, misinformation abounds even about basic concepts of logic.

The comment in the second sentence was based on research and also on an encounter I had with a management-level official at the department of education of my county, whom I contacted by email in hopes of getting support I could use to pitch my book to publishers.

The encounter led to a startling--indeed, scandalous--conclusion: Schools in my county do not teach logic as a subject in its own right.

I sought support from the education establishment to change this by writing a book, because I had run into a Catch-22 situation that I’m sure will sound familiar: to get a book published, you need a literary agent; to get an agent, you must be published. As explained below, I was able to evade this conundrum through sheer luck.

It took several weeks to get a response from the powers-that-be.

On the appointed day, I walked into the building, cleared security pretty much the way they do it at airports, and went up to the second floor looking for the room number. It’s a very large building; I had to ask directions.

The man behind the desk shook my hand and asked me to sit down. I got down to business right away after the obligatory kowtowing -- ”thank you very much for granting me an audience, your royal highness” sort of thing.

However, unlike Barack Obama and Janet Yellen, I did not bow.

I handed the fellow a sheet of paper with a simple example of scientific reasoning, stated in argument form. I asked whether it and other such examples, discussed in great detail in the book, would be suitable for classroom use in county schools.

The example contained a scientific explanation of the following fact:

3. A bowling ball will sink when immersed in a pool of water.

This fact is explained by means of a logical inference from another fact,

2. The downward pressure of a bowling ball is greater than the upward pressure of water in a pool,

...coupled with a conditional connecting the two facts:

1. If the downward pressure of a bowling ball is greater than the upward pressure of water in a pool, a bowling ball will sink when immersed in a pool of water.

2. The downward pressure of a bowling ball is greater than the upward pressure of water in a pool.

Therefore,

3. A bowling ball will sink when immersed in a pool of water.

No big deal, right?

The man looked puzzled as he went over the material, then said: “We don’t have anybody who can teach this.”

I didn’t know how to react, so I just sat there.

The argument from 1 and 2 to 3 is a substitution instance of a valid argument form known as modus ponens. Here is a visualization I use in my book to explain MP to ten-year-olds. Colors and alignment make the process visual so they can plug-and-play.

• The arrow is the symbol for material implication and means “if-then.”
• The yellow highlighting is replaced by the sentence “the downward pressure of a bowling ball is greater than the upward pressure of water in a pool.”
• The green highlighting is replaced by the sentence “a bowling ball will sink when immersed in a pool of water.”
• The horizontal line means “therefore.

Just for grins, I asked the official if there was a way I could get the county to use my book in the classroom.

Any such use, he said, would have to be approved by the state department of education. If I wanted to get my book on the “approved list,” I’d have to take my case there.

That was the end of the conversation.

Fast forward.

Here is how I was able to get my book published.

Jenny Rompas of Jenny Stanford Publishing of Singapore (!) read an article about Picasso’s Demoiselles I had published online and asked if I could write a book about it.

I explained that I only had lecture notes, which would take me a long time to expand into a book. Would she be interested in a book on logic for kids instead?

I submitted a proposal a week later, they approved it and sent me a contract. On June 30, 2023, the book came out and is available at Amazon. Taylor and Francis, the distributor, is working to get it into bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million.

But … what if I hadn’t written the Picasso article?

What if Jenny Rompas hadn’t seen it?

What if her email had ended up in the spam folder?

What if I’d failed to make a convincing case the book would be profitable?

Hmmm ...

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

By the way, if you do an Amazon search on the topic of my book, you’ll get puzzle books of various kinds. Well and good except from such books:

• Readers won’t learn that logic is a subject in its own right, like math and science.
• It will not be apparent that math and science can’t work without logical reasoning.
• It will not be apparent how exactly math and science apply logical reasoning.

One thing more. The logic content of Common Core is a mess. See my two articles at American Thinker, here and here, which I forwarded by email to departments of education around the country at the time. The few who responded told me they’d “look into it.”

As far as I know, Common Core has not gone away.

Arnold Cusmariu is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. He has a PhD in philosophy from Brown University, has taught logic and has made original contributions to logic. After academia, he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and retired in 2010. He discusses his Agency work in “Philosophers at CIA?”, The Journal of Intelligence and Analysis (forthcoming). Also a sculptor, Arnold explains his work in “Turing Algorithms in Art.” 

Image: Amazon // fair use