becoming a reasonable person

Abstract

The official and politically correct language of the educational world consistently insists on the importance of learning to think during the period of formal and compulsory education. Returning to a basic principle of political life, possibly as old as mankind but more clearly declared in forms of democratic organization, we cannot understand a democracy without the existence of an educated and informed citizenry, able to think for itself in confrontation with options and world conceptions different from its own. Intelligence - understood as the ability of people to develop abstract thinking and reasoning, to understand complex ideas, solve problems and overcome obstacles, learn from experience and adapt to the environment - is the most valuable attribute that we have. Reasoning well, therefore, is essential to all human beings, both in relation to their personal lives and in the relations we have living in society. Despite this, there are several mistakes that we make when thinking, when we make decisions or solve problems, both in our everyday lives and in decisions about social and political issues of a general nature. So it is necessary to improve our ability to reason in general, with emphasis on formal and informal reasoning. This improvement is a fundamental goal of education, although in practice it has not received enough attention. In order to achieve this, the implementation of programs of learning to think are required, including the Philosophy for Children program, which involves one of the most solid and consistent proposals on this subject. The program uses the Western philosophical tradition, focusing on the quality of the arguments during discussions of the classical themes of philosophy, all considered within the framework of the school converted into a community of inquiry.