I should preface my comment with the fact that I do not have children of my own, but a lot of young cousins and nieces & nephews that I experiment teaching philosophies with.
Books can be a shaky premise in terms of getting kids interested in rationality. This next generation are filled with more stimuli than ever before and rationality, especially as a child, is a fairly dry subject matter. Of course, it depends on the child and their predisposition to reading, current reading habits and overall critical thinking skills.
Having said that, the best teaching method I find with children incorporate rational discussion on topics they enjoy or infusing it into a game they enjoy. For example, creating rules to an invented game that involve ideas dealing with honesty or other abstract ideas often gets some interesting rational discussion going on why a rule is a certain way. Then, using what you have learnt from these books such as “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, throw in bits and pieces of information about rationality as a subject matter. That way, after they associate a positive relationship with learning about rationality and using it effectively in areas of life they enjoy, when you introduce books to them about the topic at a later age, the chances of them reading it and enjoying will greatly increase.
I should preface my comment with the fact that I do not have children of my own, but a lot of young cousins and nieces & nephews that I experiment teaching philosophies with.
Books can be a shaky premise in terms of getting kids interested in rationality. This next generation are filled with more stimuli than ever before and rationality, especially as a child, is a fairly dry subject matter. Of course, it depends on the child and their predisposition to reading, current reading habits and overall critical thinking skills.
Having said that, the best teaching method I find with children incorporate rational discussion on topics they enjoy or infusing it into a game they enjoy. For example, creating rules to an invented game that involve ideas dealing with honesty or other abstract ideas often gets some interesting rational discussion going on why a rule is a certain way. Then, using what you have learnt from these books such as “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, throw in bits and pieces of information about rationality as a subject matter. That way, after they associate a positive relationship with learning about rationality and using it effectively in areas of life they enjoy, when you introduce books to them about the topic at a later age, the chances of them reading it and enjoying will greatly increase.
Neat! I’d be interested in more details about that, especially the invented games!
(I have a three-year-old.)