21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Does What It Claims, June 6, 2005
This review is from: The Thinking Toolbox: Thirty-five Lessons That Will Build Your Reasoning Skills (Paperback)
Having read The Fallacy Detective, written by Hans and Nathaniel Bluedorn, I turned immediately to the second title in the Christian Logic series. The Thinking Toolbox is "like a toolbox - full of all kinds of tools you can use for different thinking tasks" (from the back cover). Like its predecessor, it is self-teaching and is written to appeal to both teenagers and adults.
While the format of this book is much the same as The Fallacy Detective, it is in many ways better-written and better-formatted. While the format of the book is much the same, featuring thirty-five lessons, each followed by questions of application, the illustrations were superior and more appealing. It continued to feature the humorous touches that made the previous book such a joy to read, even though it dealt with weighty subject matter.
The Thinking Toolbox teaches reasoning skills. It begins with introducing the differences between a discussion, a disagreement, an argument and a fight and guides the reader to understand how to discern premises and conclusions. It progresses to providing tools to understand and deal with opposing viewpoints, before wrapping up with tools for science. These include observation, brainstorming, hyposthesizing, analysis and so on. There are even a few projects and games added to the end of the book to provide further opportunities for application.
The only complaint I might have about this book is that the questions following each lesson did not repeat as often or as deliberately as they did in The Fallacy Detective, which provides fewer opportunities for review.
This is another helpful title that will no-doubt be helpful in guiding students to use and improve their God-given reasoning abilities. I would suggest that this title has less-appeal to adults than its predessor, but equal appeal to teenagers. It would be a very useful tool for summer-reading or as part of a homeschooling cirriculum. I unreservedly recommend it.
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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not Just For Teens, May 16, 2005
This review is from: The Thinking Toolbox: Thirty-five Lessons That Will Build Your Reasoning Skills (Paperback)
I loved The Thinking Toolbox, and I'm 43 years old! The Bluedorns have done it again, with this follow up to their book, The Fallacy Detective. The lessons featured in The Thinking Toolbox are directed towards homeschool students, but are actually applicable and valuable for 'students' of all ages. In this day and age of news reports that are questionable, at best, and flimsy-flip-flop values and moral relativism, the Thinking Toolbox should be on everyone's shelf.
I found the illustrations by Richard LaPierre to be especially charming, appealing and fun. This is no dry textbook. Mr. LaPierre's talent is refreshing. A great accompaniment to the Bluedorn's commentary.
Be sure to pick up a copy for your teenager, and for yourself.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Breath of Fresh Air, June 13, 2005
This review is from: The Thinking Toolbox: Thirty-five Lessons That Will Build Your Reasoning Skills (Paperback)
It's not often that I get excited about reviewing a book, but I was excited about this one. We live in a world filled with knowledge, but knowledge is all but useless without critical thinking skills. As important as this is for adults, it's even more important for teens - because it is our teen years that we are solidifying how we see the world and who we are.
The ability to think critically impacts every aspect of our children's daily lives. Everything from how to handle disagreement between friends, to dealing with peer pressure, to reasoning out problems in school. As adults, we bring those skills into our marriages, our families, our jobs, and finances. But teaching those skills is a daunting task. How do you teaching someone how to think?
I was surprised to see how easily The Thinking Toolbox does just that. Each short explanation is paired with a series of fun, relevant exercises to help teens use the skills they learn. How to defend what you believe. How to tell the difference between fact, inference, and opinion. How to use corroborating evidence. How and why sometimes you should learn to defeat your own argument. How to analyze data and to brainstorm. Even situations - such as when someone is in emotional distress - when using logic is not appropriate.
But this book goes beyond teens. These are pithy and powerful tools. In reading the book, I couldn't help but think how many situations we, as adults, face every day when such skills could be put to use. From analyzing the trustworthiness of a news report to resolving personal differences at work. The section on the difference between a discussion, a disagreement, and a fight has powerful relevance in nearly every one of our lives today.
The design is teen-friendly, designed to be easy to read and eye-catching. One minor criticism. The exercises run together, in a list, and sometimes aren't well differentiated. When the type of exercise changes from one to the other, this can get confusing, especially in the front of the book until you get used to the format. But a little guidance on how to use the book takes care of that problem easily. I do hope, however, that in future versions, the layout of the exercises is tweaked to make them easier to follow.
I would have also liked to see the authors spend time up front talking about why reasoning skills are so important. We all have busy lives - especially teens - and there is so much we are expected to learn. Knowing how this learning will help us motivates us to study.
I remember a movie back from the 80s called "Summer School," with Mark Harmon. Assigned to teach summer school English, a physical education teacher had to figure out how to get a bunch of decidedly unmotivated students to pay attention to him teaching English. So when one student complained about broken sunglasses, Harmon took that opportunity to show the students how they could use good English skills to get free stuff. The class wrote a letter to the manufacturer, complaining about the glasses, and ended up with a box of brand-new glasses for everyone.
Likewise, a few examples up front in "The Thinking Toolbox, "showing how this information will help in teens' everyday lives, would be great.
- H. L. Nigro, founder, Strong Tower Publishing
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