An Experiment on the Teaching of Logic in Upper Secondary Schools

This attempt is an experiment in modernization of school mathematics. The writer's previous investigation of the logicality of the secondary school students showed that in the traditional school mathematics the students' ability of logic was not so high. The writer keenly felt the necessity of the deliberate teaching of logic in secondary schools. This led him to make an experiment on the teaching of logic in upper secondary schools. The students: The first year students of Upper Secondary School Attached to Osaka Gakugei University. The contents of the teaching materials: 1. The meaning and the combination of proposition. 2. Truth table of simple propositions. 3. Compound proposition. 4. Proportional function and true set. 5. Conditional sentences and biconditional sentences. 6. Convers, reverse, and contradiction. 7. Tautology and contradiction. 8. Laws of logical symbols. 9. Methods of argument. 10. Quantificational proposition. The results: (1) It was found to be quiet possible that the students could be made to master the above materials within ten school hours. The students paid increasing attention to them and showed a strong interest in learning them. (2) The students gained a clear understanding of the very meaning of such logical terms as "or", "and", "if ..., then", etc., and came to use these terms in their exact and logical sense as distinct from the ordinary meaning in every speech. Further, the teaching of "negation of proposition" based on the Law of de Morgan made the students realize clearly the meaning of negation and made it possible for them to build up proper negative sentences. (3) The students knew that the forms of argument which they had been using unconsciously could be verified by truth table, and realized the significance of truth table and the importance of logic. After this experiment there was a growing tendency that the students were more careful about the verbal expressions and made a more conscious examination of methods of argument