Reasonable Minds Thinking Reasonably

JECA’s Logic School is comprised of 7th and 8th-grade students. In the logic stage of the Trivium, students learn to think and reason well about all of the information they encountered and all of the knowledge they acquired in the grammar stage. In turn, students begin to understand the facts they have learned and relate those facts to one another in a meaningful way.

In the logic stage, then, study revolves around not only knowing what something is but also understanding how it works. Accordingly, the emphasis on cognitive skills shifts from the concrete to the analytical.

Students also begin to naturally question the veracity of what they have previously learned in the logic stage. They begin to wonder whether or not the knowledge they acquired in the grammar stage is in fact true, and if so, how and why it is true. As a means of guiding students through an appropriately tempered examination of what makes truth true, JECA teaches both formal and informal logic to all of our 7th and 8th-grade students. A comprehensive study of logic provides students with the tools they need to purposefully and appropriately weigh that which they are taught—at home, at church, at school, and in the world—and arrive at valid conclusions concerning the nature of those lessons through the filter of God’s Word. Thus, the teaching of logic is a key component in developing the quality of Biblical discernment in our students.

The logic stage is not the “doubt” stage, but the inherent questioning that accompanies this step of a young person’s learning process is a necessary one. It serves as a stepping stone, moving the student towards the formation of wisdom in the next stage of the trivium.

In the end, the goal of the logic stage is to usher students on to maturity by teaching them how to temper their questions and posture their doubts with an attitude of honor and respect. It encourages students to ask questions out of a genuine hunger for the truth rather than out of a selfish and defiled attempt to justify that which they wish were the truth.

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