Critical Thinking Skills Press

We have used some materials from Critical Thinking Press. Although they are highly touted in many homeschool catalogs, I haven't been as impressed as many others.

The Mind Benders seem fun as well as being beneficial for developing thinking skills. But, hey, they're mostly just logic problems. And you can get those in puzzle books for a lot cheaper than you can from this educational publisher.

We bought Building Thinking Skills when the older kids were younger. I was seriously underwhelmed. Some friends have been impressed with these sets of books. They give practice in analogies (both verbal and figural-spatial) that would probably help a kid practice for annual standardized tests or the SAT. But since that's not important to us, I wasn't finding anything valuable in these books. Now, that is probably due in part to having kids who are more right-brained than average. The Building Thinking Skills books seemed way too easy, and almost entirely pointless. However, when Kid#6 came along and exhibited some learning difficulties, I started learning about non-verbal learning disorders. I figured she would need some help in areas that came naturally to the older kids. So I purchased another copy of Building Thinking Skills. Maggie seemed to enjoy it, and it may even have helped a little. Once or twice a year she asks to go on to level 2, but I haven't let her yet. I want her to get a little older first. But someday we will use that book with her, whereas it seemed pointless with the other kids.

I used Critical Thinking with a group of three teenagers (aged 12-17). It is a logic course. It's fairly decent. It covered things like "and" and "or" and "if-then." It talked about reasonable arguing versus unreasonable fighting. It had a section on truth-tables. It covered propaganda techniques, advertising schemes, and common errors in reasoning. It wasn't something we looked forward to working on during our time with the course, but, hey, it served a purpose.

I thought their history books looked more intriguing. So my friend Barb loaned us her copy of Critical Thinking in United States History Series: New Republic to Civil War. Paul and I were excited to start it. We loved the concept of studying logic in the context of American history. But as we got into it, we had some complaints. The lessons seemed to us to come from too liberal a slant. But worse, it was just plain hard to follow. There were lessons in logic on one page. Then there were worksheets to practice the skills elsewhere, with the answer guide somewhere in the teacher's book. Then there were the history readings to analyze, along with questions and answers. Then the answer guide for those were in a different section of the teacher's guide. And along with a gazillion bookmarks for those things, there was the part of the teacher's guide that showed what sections needed to be done in preparation for which lessons. And I tell ya, my head was spinning. I need something easier than all that page-flipping.

As we worked our way through the book, it got more and more painful. About 1/3 of the way through, I finally decided I was ready to quit Critical Thinking's New Republic to Civil War, and the boys cheered! One reason was because it was purporting to teach us something we'd already learned in a MUCH clearer way from the book Fallacy Detective. Although I deeply object to the theology behind the first three chapters of the Fallacy Detective (equating biblical "wisdom" with intellectual smarts instead of the "fear of the Lord"), the rest of the book is done superbly and is not necessarily pro- or anti-Christian. The book makes its points. It does so clearly. It does so in an orderly manner. It's easy to teach from. It's easy to refer back to when that becomes necessary. It has practice problems that teach new concepts and review old concepts. It has the answer key in the back of the book instead of scattered in different places in a separate teacher's guide (like the Critical Thinking books do). We learned a lot more from Fallacy Detective than from any other logic course we've tried.