Why don't they teach logic in secondary education?

College Life
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<p>In a random elective I took freshman year, Introduction to Ethical Thinking, we covered a section on logical fallacies. Understanding logical fallacies is basically knowing how to think and reason effectively, which is far more important than understanding the rules of grammar, the history of your state, or any other trivia. Why isn’t this addressed in the secondary education curriculum? From the best that I can gather, one purpose of (for example) story problem exercises should be to practice logical reasoning, but that was never explained to me. If that is an intention by assigning story problems, most teachers surely don’t even understand that about their own curriculum. It was not uncommon at all for my teachers to completely disregard story problems.</p>

<p>In math, by assigning logical proof exercises, students practice thinking in logical steps, which is another very important ability. Again, teachers don’t even appear to understand the importance of these exercises. My teacher (and I love her to death) actually agreed with the students that mathematical proofs were tedious and unnecessary, and she apologized to us for having to assign them.</p>

<p>As a result, in my opinion, students graduate secondary school and still do not understand the rules of logic, how to make reasonable decisions, or how to come to logical conclusions. The curriculum teaches what to think, but not how to think. Why is this?</p>

<p>A friend of mine suggested (and I agree) that religion probably plays a major role. Religious beliefs break fundamental rules of logic, so a curriculum that explicitly taught those rules to students, who subsequently would begin questioning what their families and religions had previously taught them, would be completely unacceptable to parents and religious leaders. So because adults are under the influence of delusions and faulty logic, children suffer and never learn how to reason properly. My other suspicion is that teachers themselves are often not qualified to teach students logical reasoning and probably carry religious beliefs themselves, both of which would explain why they don’t seem to understand the purpose of story problem exercises.</p>

<p>Does anyone else have thoughts on this? I don’t know much about the educational system or what the curriculum is for teachers in training. For all I know, it does emphasize everything it should, and teachers just don’t comprehend the material. No matter what, in my mind, this is a major issue of concern. I graduated high school feeling like I had accomplished something, but the more I progress through college, the more I feel like secondary education was relatively meaningless. That’s not the way it should be.</p>

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<p>it’s the school’s job to train future employees, not heretics</p>

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<p>I laughed out loud at schaden’s comment. Can’t tell if you’re serious or not, but incase you are I’ll explain the *fallacies in your logic<a href=“badum-tish”>/i</a>. Logical thinking is an extremely important life skill, a lot more useful than history to me, but I think freshmen requirements are good for people. I hate english just as much as the next guy, but it teaches people how to convey their thoughts in a professional and coherent manner.</p>

<p>If you asked me, I’d make it a freshman requirement to do atleast one class in philosophy 1xxx’s. I think you make a very good point and agree completely.</p>

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<p>My school is a religious school, and we have at least two levels of logic classes.</p>

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<p>cos it’s high school. Have you SEEN secondary education in the US?</p>

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I am curious why you think that. Religion is the best example of everyday axiomatic reasoning I can think of! (I am not saying that religious leaders don’t commit logical fallacies, but I don’t see how the nature of religion breaks the fundamental rules of logic.)</p>

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<p>we have way too many dumb teachers. A good teacher should know why school is important and be able to explain why their students are taking the class. Nobody needs to do math problems or write essays at the office, but the things you learn from doing that makes you a smarter, more analytical person.</p>

<p>God dam teacher union won’t let anyone fire any teachers, even the ****ty ones. Do away with teacher unions and if a teacher isn’t doing anything, fire her/his ass.</p>

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<p>Hadsed, you clearly don’t understand Schaden’s comment, which basically agrees with the OP.</p>

<p>The schools have political and social agendas to indoctrinate, which are different depending on which part of the country you grew up in. Some places might try to reinforce religion or like after this Texas textbook nonsense, rewrite American history to appear more favorable to white American Christians. In other parts of the country, the schools try their best to make students adopt the political views of the teacher’s union (Democrats) and are every bit as “I will tell you what to think” as the religious conservatives, even though the students are fooled into thinking that all of the conclusions “they” arrived to was the result of independent thinking, despite everyone they know sharing the exact same cookie-cutter views.</p>

<p>If either brand of school system taught logic, it would weaken their objective of making unquestioning political drones. Even on a non-political level, most people would be better served in their occupations by not having logic and causing a fuss over their existence. Sometimes it is better to let the cubicle workers idle for thirty years than actually provide them the capability to analyze what they can do with their lives; if they weren’t mindless, over-medicated, overweight, pop-culture slaves to their existence that they are.</p>

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<p>I wish I could’ve taken a logic class instead of stats for general education requirements. Would have been much more useful…</p>

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<p>Under a really idiotic definition of religious beliefs, maybe. :D</p>

<p>I think the reason people need a logic type class is they need to be able to appreciate that there are real subtleties involved in reasoning. I usually go “Don’t learn this from a class, you have to learn it from life,” but things like actual mathematical reasoning and logic are really something people NEVER see, and it would enrich them to do so. It’s definitely sketchy that a bunch of humanities and social sciences are required to graduate from schools such as my own, but not logic. The few humanities folks I know who’ve taken a logic or proofs class have often said they were humbled by how hard it was to think that way, and even said it helped them be clearer in essay-writing.</p>

<p>It’s a fundamental side of the mind that is all too often left untapped, which I don’t think is healthy. I believe this has nothing to do with religion, just that people dismiss it because someone has brainwashed them into thinking it’s important to read and memorize pages of history books, but not to be able to write basic logical statements with precision and grace.</p>

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<p>

We didn’t go very in-depth in my class, but from looking at a list, I think I can relate all of these to religion. If I had continued, I’m sure I would find plenty more. This particular list only had 20 items total.
[ol]
[<em>]Bare assertion fallacy: premise in an argument is assumed to be true purely because it says that it is true.
[</em>]Base rate fallacy: using weak evidence to make a probability judgment without taking into account known empirical statistics about the probability.
[<em>]Ignoratio elenchi: An irrelevant conclusion or irrelevant thesis.
[</em>]Is-ought problem: the inappropriate inference that because something is some way or other, so it ought to be that way.
[<em>]Homunculus fallacy: where a “middle-man” is used for explanation, this usually leads to regressive middle-man. Explanations without actually explaining the real nature of a function or a process. Instead, it explains the concept in terms of the concept itself, without first defining or explaining the original concept.
[</em>]Naturalistic fallacy: a fallacy that claims that if something is natural, then it is good or right.
[li]Negative proof fallacy: that, because a premise cannot be proven false, the premise must be true; or that, because a premise cannot be proven true, the premise must be false.[/ol]</p>[/li]
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That’s very strange. My professor was actually a pastor, as well. But he clearly did not understand the material… He was asked to teach the class at the last minute and hadn’t even read the book. I’m curious how your religious school justifies religious beliefs with logic. Does it teach that religion “transcends” and exists outside of logic?</p>

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<p>Everytime a humanities major sells his/her degree by saying that he/she learns how to ‘think critically’, unlike those science and math majors who just memorize formulas and push symbols around all day, I cringe. Humanities majors really need to be exposed more to the analytical subjects.</p>

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<p>You can be religious and have carefully reasoned through your beliefs . . . the people who create this logic | religion dichotomy have a misunderstanding about both subjects.</p>

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<p>^^^ well isn’t there a form of logical reasoning in ‘pushing symbols around all day’ and ‘memorizing formulas’. Aren’t you being a little naive in say that all those science and math majors haven’t learned critical thinking - because apparently the only way they can is to learn to think critically by reading a tone of novels? There is an enormous amount of critical thinking and logic skill involved in understanding and implementing mathically ideas and science hypothesis - so sad you don’t see it that way - so please continue to read your novels.</p>

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<p>read my post more carefully. i changed the grammar to make it more clear</p>

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<p>Oh I get it now. that long sentence and the commas threw me off.
Well played, well played…</p>

<p>…so… i’ll be leaving now…</p>

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You can “carefully reason” through your beliefs, but it doesn’t mean you did anything productive. If you don’t have the tools, all you are doing is deluding yourself into believing you have come to logical conclusions (as well as wasting your time and actually making it even harder on yourself in the future by further solidifying delusional beliefs).</p>

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<p>dont let the door hit you on the way out</p>

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<p>Shame I didn’t have logic in high school. Otherwise I might have been able to get more than one side of this rubix cube. :p</p>

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<p>Lol you don’t need a class to teach you that. Aren’t there like 4 moves you just repeat until it’s solved?</p>