James Madison Student

Typically counted as 1/2 credit for high school students.

Download sample pages from James Madison Critical Thinking Course (PDF)

Captivating Scenarios, Exceptional Critical Thinking
Engage your teen in captivating crime-related scenarios and give him the exceptional critical thinking skills he needs with the James Madison Critical Thinking Course. Superbly easy for any homeschool family to use, the step-by-step, self-instructional lessons and activities are straightforward and applicable across your teen’s entire curriculum.

Learn Analytical Skills by Solving Mysteries
Using mini-mysteries and a fictional detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, each chapter of the James Madison Critical Thinking Course focuses on various thinking skills and leads your teen gradually into complicated analytical skills. Massive in scope, the course teaches more than sixty-five skills and concepts related to critical thinking, such as learning how to distinguish a fact from an opinion, recognizing ambiguity in a statement, evaluating arguments as valid or not, and assessing common fallacies in reasoning.

Includes Everything Covered in a Typical Logic Course
Everything in a typical introductory logic course is included in the James Madison Critical Thinking Course. Pages are perforated for easy removal and are reproducible for your home use. The Instruction Guide (sold separately) provides answers to both the exercises and the quizzes, but virtually no additional information.

Topics Include:

Interpret and apply complex texts, instructions, illustrations, etc.

Recognize and clarify issues, claims, arguments, and explanations.

Distinguish: conclusions, premises (reasons), arguments, explanations, assumptions (stated/unstated), issues, claims (statements), suppositions, unstated conclusions, unstated premises, and implications.

Recognize ambiguity and unclearness in claims, arguments, and explanations.

Distinguish necessary and sufficient conditions.

Describe the structure or outline of arguments and explanations: confirmation, disconfirmation.

Evaluate whether an inductive argument is strong or weak.

Evaluate claims and arguments in terms of criteria such as: consistency, relevance, support.

Evaluate analogical arguments and inductive generalization arguments in terms of criteria, such as: the greater the number of similarities between the conclusion and the premises regarding the sample, the stronger the argument.

Assess the relevance of claims to other claims, and to questions, descriptions, representations, procedures, information, directives, rules, principles, etc.

Evaluate whether a deductive argument is valid or invalid (logical form): categorical, truth-functional, and semantic/definitional.

Distinguish supporting, conflicting, compatible, and equivalent claims, arguments, explanations, descriptions, representations, etc.

Identify and avoid errors in reasoning, informal fallacies: begging the question, equivocation, post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after that, therefore, because of that), false dilemma/false dichotomy fallacy (line drawing fallacy, perfectionist fallacy), smoke screen/red herring/rationalizing, hasty generalization, appeal to ridicule/sarcasm, ad hominem fallacy (personal attack, poisoning the well), appeal to illegitimate authority, loaded question, evidence surrogate, stereotyping, appeal to consequences (favorable or unfavorable), "wishful thinking", genetic fallacy, biased generalization, anecdotal evidence.

Discern whether pairs of claims are consistent, contrary, contradictory, or paradoxical.

Publisher's Information
Authors: William O'Meara, Ph.D and Daniel Flage, Ph.D
Pages: 544, perforated
Activities: Sixty-five critical thinking related skills and concepts
Black & White: Yes
Binding: Paperback
Copyright: 2011
ISBN: 9781601441454
Publisher: The Critical Thinking Co
Printed In: USA
Typical High School Credits Earned: 1/2 credit critical thinking
Faith-Based: No

Awards and Endorsements:
Cathy Duffy - 101 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum