Principles of Reasoning

“To every man there comes … that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered a chance to do a special thing unique to him and fitted to his talent. What a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for the work which would be his finest hour.” —Winston Churchill

Principles of Reasoning, a course for 8^th and 9^th graders at American Heritage School – Salt Lake City, introduces students to the 4R Method, a powerful method for learning that aims to take learning from the mind into the heart by fostering deep understanding, the internalization of truth, and the development of character. This course is all about learning, doing, and becoming. As a child of the Almighty God living in these latter days, you have a grand future and important responsibilities ahead of you. To make this a reality, you will want to learn all that you can possibly learn, and you will want to adopt guiding principles that will help you to rise up and become all you were sent here to be. This is the purpose of your AHS education, and of this course in particular.

Learning is a key element of our preparation for life — both here on Earth and throughout eternity. For this reason, this course will focus on learning: why we want to learn, what we want to learn, how to pursue that learning in the most practical and effective way, how to collect learning in a way that lasts, how to apply what we learn to ourselves and our society, and how to communicate that learning to others in clear, impactful ways. We will especially focus on how to learn principles: powerful truths that can be used to help make wise, righteous decisions, even when circumstances may be confusing.

In this course, you will learn and practice a simple and powerful method for learning called the 4R Method, which breaks down the learning process into four steps: Research, Reason, Relate, and Record. You will “Research” by engaging with scriptures; scholarly and academic texts; works of great literature, music, and art; living people; and physical artifacts in order to acquire knowledge. You will “Reason” by thinking critically about what you are learning in order to distinguish truth from error and good from bad, all with the goal of distilling true principles from your sources. You will learn and practice essential reasoning skills, such as judging between truth and error, evaluating truth claims, using deductive and inductive reasoning, recognizing logical fallacies, and evaluating various kinds of sources for reliability and applicability. You will “Relate” by drawing connections between what you are learning and other areas, including other subjects you are learning, events in history, and your own life. Finally, you will “Record” what you have learned so it will not be forgotten.

As recording what you learn is so essential to the learning process, this course will help you learn various methods of recording truths you have discovered, with a specific focus on writing. You will learn how to organize your thoughts in written form by first learning to write clear sentences, then well-structured paragraphs, and finally solid five-paragraph essays. The writing skills you develop in this course will serve as a foundation for the academic and personal writing you will perform in high school and beyond.

By learning to reason, to write, and to discover and apply principles, you will have the power to continually improve, spiraling ever upward toward “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). If you follow this path long enough, you will become a powerful instrument in the hands of the Lord, and He will be able to use you in ways that will amaze you. In this way, you will be ready when He “figuratively [taps you] on the shoulder and [offers you] a chance” to do the “special thing” He sent you here to do.