This session focuses on the particular challenges of teaching logic and how these can be addressed by the teacher’s proper understanding of the unique features of students in the dialectical stage of education.
In particular, we must understand that inquiry governed by logic is both rule-bound and open-ended, and that both the rules and the freedom of logic must be properly communicated to the student. The crucial mistake to avoid is to emphasize the rules of logic at the expense of the open-ended nature of inquiry that it is designed to aid.
Drawing on the works of Plato and Aristotle, this session reviews the nature and purpose of logic, both in terms of the subject matter itself, as well as the attitude with which teachers must approach students in the logic stage.
Gary Hartenburg
Gary earned his doctoral degree from the University of California, where he studied philosophy and wrote his dissertation on ancient Greek philosophy. Since 2013, he has been the Director of the HBU Honors College, a campus-wide honors program that educates its students in the liberal arts through intensive, Socratic discussion of great books, dynamic lectures and personalized writing instruction. Gary also teaches philosophy at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He has spoken at a number of professional philosophy and classical education conferences, and has published articles on ancient philosophy and philosophy of religion. He is currently working on a book about Aristotle’s philosophy of education.
