8132019 Why We Should Tech Logic in Schools

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comment analysis TODAY 991266 FRIDAY 118

There is an interesting sayingldquoTell me and I forget teach meand I may remember involve

me and I learnrdquoBenjamin Bloom an American

educational psychologist and manyothers in the educational field haveconceptualised the acquisition and re-tention of knowledge as having manydomains or levels of depth

The first domain is rememberingIn essence it refers to retaining factsUnfortunately retaining facts withoutunderstanding them is of little valueIt also has a very limited lifespan

The next level is comprehension orunderstanding This is shown by ourability to express in our own words themeaning of the information

With understanding we can startto analyse catalogue or break downthe knowledge to judge appraise orevaluate the knowledge and to relateit to a new context or to synthesise by

Why we should teach logic in schoolsTHE BEST WAY TO LEARN

K RANGA KRISHNAN

K Ranga Krishnanis Dean of theDuke-NUSGraduate MedicalSchool SingaporeA clinician-scientistand psychiatrist hechaired theDepartment ofPsychiatry andBehaviouralSciences at DukeUniversity MedicalCentre from 1998 to2009

This is part of aweekly series on theway we learn Toread the first twopieces by ProfRanga go totdysgcomranga orscan the QR code

integrating it with other informationWhen learning many skills in law

medicine and other areas of study it iscritical that we have the ability to useknowledge Without this abilit y the

facts by themselves have limited worthOne element that is essential i n

this progression of knowledge acqui-sition is reasoning To reason is to i n-fer to draw conclusions from data in-

formation or premises The term logicis commonly used to describe codes ofgood reasoning It used to be a subjecttaught in schools But now it is rarelyformally taught

Informal logic is sometimes de-scribed as critical thinking It tells ushow people reason things out figur-ing out whether the conclusions followthe assumptions

Formal logic is the sysorganised application of thof logic The principles of l

versal and apply to all fieldmany strands of logic wit

ing to A ristotleThere are two kinds of tive and inductive

Deductive logic refersions where all the premiand in which case there cfor the conclusions to be fadamental element in deduing is syllogism where a inferred from two supposof which has one term in cthe conclusion For examp

All anima ls are aliveCat is an animalCat is alive

In medicine and in mforms of science it is diffideductive logic Deductabsolutist It offers blac

standards where the cother follows from the supit does not

Inductive logic or reasabsolutist or definite butquantitative range of pWhile deductive reasonas top down from a geneto the specific inductive

bottom upMost medical research

of the inductive type Soscientific research

In medicine this typeing forms the basis of wevidence-based medicine

EBM is the use of datto assess risks and benements and diagnostic teshas to be then used to dments for a particular pa

Application of EBM datdepends on many factorscondition of a patient h isand a number of other facstanding logic helps us proper use of EBM given

Thus in medicine as infields understanding anare essential elements for usynthesise evaluate and cedge and apply it in a prac

It is not enough to knoknowledge Learning to a given situation is a morskill than memory alone

world this position is eve

ical as facts are easy tois more important is to lapply knowledge

Logic as a way of learnsoning is a worthwhile goelement for innovation Atthis is a critical focus Tof patients physicians mto apply knowledge in aframework hence the iminvolving our medical stly in the treatment of patlearn more from such expemerely listening to lectur

Students learnmore from beinginvolved inlearning ratherthan merelylistening to

lecturesTODAY FILE PHOTO