Wow! What a great resource! This self-published book written by two young men who were homeschooled and “live in the middle of a cornfield” doesn’t look or read like an amateur job at all. These guys give learners a professional, but reader-friendly, introduction to logic and debate in thirty-five lessons. Of course, the school teacher in me immediately sees thirty-five chapters as one lesson for each week of the school year, and that’s probably exactly how we’ll be using this book this next year.

“This book is like a toolbox. This book is full of different kinds of tools you can use for different thinking tasks. Just as you take a wrench out of a regular toolbox and use it to fix the sink, so you can use the tools we give you in this book to solve thinking problems.

This book would be a good introduction to logic or to science since it covers rules of debate and argument, evaluating evidence, and using the scientific method to test observations and come to a conclusion. In the final section of the book, the authors encourage learners to do a project using the information learned in the first part of the book. The purpose of the project is to use the thinking tools that students have been reading about so that the information will become more than just isolated facts about circumstantial evidence and brainstorming and the analysis of data. Thinking tools that are used to do a project that interests the student become useful thinking tools that can be pulled out and applied to other tasks and projects.

Not only do I plan to use this book in my homeschool this year with my third grader and my fifth grader, I also will suggest that we use the book in our homeschool co-op to teach middle school and/or high school students the reasoning skills that the Bluedorns so skillfully explicate. The outside cover of the book itself says that it is “written for ages 13 through adult;” however, I gave it to my eight year old, and he was fascinated by the information, the cartoon pictures, and especially the exercises at the end of each lesson. I would say that the book could be used with students in the upper elementary grades with the help of a parent or teacher and as a self-teaching tool for any student over the age of twelve.

The Thinking Toolbox is available from any one of a number of suppliers listed at the publisher’s website,Christian Logic, along with the Bluedorns’ other book on logic for students, The Fallacy Detective. It’s also available through Amazon via the links below. I received this book as gift from the publisher via Mind and Media, a clearinghouse for reviews of Christian books and other media.

Engineer Husband and the urchins are GTW to buy some school supplies to donate to the “Fill a Backpack” drive at the church where the urchins are attending Vacation Bible School this week. In the meantime, via Betsy’s Page I found this City Journal article by Steve Malanga about how the Walmart critics are all wrong. Key quotes:

Walton figured out that one key to success was to develop a corporate culture in which management and employees worked together with the sole aim of serving the customer, a revolutionary idea at the time, though now a standard management technique.

It is instead a clash of worldviews, as unions and their allies, representing a narrow band of special interests masquerading as a populist movement, try to convince the public that super-efficient discounters like Wal-Mart lower workers’ standard of living even as they actually raise living standards by offering goods to so many at such low prices.

Regardless of the campaign against it, Wal-Mart is generating enormous support in many of its newest markets, especially in lower-income urban areas where shoppers often have few choices among stores, and where prices are typically high—especially for groceries, which account for so big a percentage of low-income budgets. Minority communities traditionally friendly to the Left’s agenda have shocked opponents by welcoming Wal-Mart and working closely with it.

Some of the critical drumbeat doubtless reflects the fact that Wal-Mart and its founding family still promote causes and values that the mainstream media oppose. Sam Walton supported conservative and free-market groups.

Ay, there’s the rub. The Big W builds stores in the inner city and in rural areas, charges low prices, operates efficiently, doesn’t pay huge salaries to its executives, and gives money to conservative groups, and won’t allow the unions to drive a wedge between workers and management. Ergo they must be evil, right?