teach students how to identify and refute logical fallacies i — Elric

Critical thinking addresses this, but identifying and refuting logical fallacies is only a part of it. A weak argument is not limited to one that contains a logical fallacy. The goal is not simply to identify weak arguments but to develop the skills to think clearly and rationally, to evaluate problems and develop strategies to solve them.

In my opinion this is best addressed in an integrated way rather than through stand alone courses. The problem with the latter is that it can be treated by both teachers and students as an exercise abstracted from the everyday concerns of life. Learning a taxonomy of fallacies is very different than learning to evaluate arguments.

It should begin when students first enter school.

1. Should courses in logic be mandatory? By that I mean courses to teach students how to identify and refute logical fallacies in everyday life? If yes, at what stage, and to what extent?

2. Since school funding is often problematic, which if any other school functions or classes should be subservient to classes in logical thinking, in terms of funding? — Elric

I know we cross swords in another thread but I do work in education, so hence my answer and I will take your questions seriously.

Ad 1. Well, I do not see why they should be mandatory. Many people get by just fine without them. Being able to reason in exactly the right way may be useful for some people, but not all. A bit like every form of education really. This applies a fortiori to formal logic, which is a kind of stylized form of argument. I do think that basic courses in argumentation and reasoning should be manadatory for lawyers (my field) and maybe some branches of science.

Ad 2: Also hard to say, it depends on which school you like to go to and what in what profile you want to develop yourself. If law is your cup of tea than you can easily skip mathematics, of engineering is, then that might be a bad idea. There is no one size fits all in education.

Almost all school subjects have 'logical progression,' at their heart.
In computing, for example, ADITDEM is key.
Analysis (understand the problem)
Design (plan your solution)
Implementation (create your solution)
Testing (test your solution)
Documentation (document everything you do)
Evaluation (report on the success of your solution and any weaknesses/strengths it has)
Maintenance (Emlploy corrective, adaptive and perfective maintenance)
ADITDEM is cyclical.

We should never accept inadequate funding in education. Education should be free to all from cradle to grave and should have nothing to do with money. I know that's not reality yet but it should always be demanded.

1) Not really. It has been tried with children but simply doesn’t work. If it was to be made mandatory then most people can perform basic logical problems if they are set in a real world context.

If you pose the same logical problem to people where one is in an abstract form and the other is in a life context then way more people get the correct answer for the ‘life context’ version.

Today most students do learn logic via computer programming. It is already a part of most curriculums.

2) School funding is not really an issue when it comes to education. What makes ANY school better is the quality/passion of the teachers. Other than that the success of schools is partially (a large part) based on cultural attitudes toward the occupation of ‘teacher’.

In many western societies ‘teachers’ are not exactly respected, whereas in other countries they are very much respected.

If you wish to learn more about this I would recommend a quick search on youtube/google regarding how Finland transformed their education system.

"Being able to reason in exactly the right way may be useful for some people, but not all."

Tobias, can you even hear the words which are coming out of your mouth? In what way could "wrong reasoning" possibly be useful to any human being?

2. Since school funding is often problematic, which if any other school functions or classes should be subservient to classes in logical thinking, in terms of funding? — Elric

Maybe the football program could be subservient to classes in logical thinking.

When schools are operating with motivated students, competent teachers, and a sound program, they get good results. Could they get better results? Sure.

Lacking motivated students or competent teachers or a sound program, schools do not get good results. Would a course in logical thinking taught by mediocre teachers to unmotivated students help? No.

Some students are getting a good education, and many are not. The reasons are legion, and standing high among them is the fact that it isn't clear what the best function for schools can and should be.

So, @Elric, back to you: what do you think the schools should be doing for students and for society.

Schools are incredibly stupid and barbaric institutions. But certainly if we're going to insist children waste years and years in these places we should teach them philosophy, which would include learning the basic valid argument forms.

As it stands schools are almost entirely a waste of time and worse, a source of great harm. They are expensive open prisons for children that teach them almost nothing worthwhile. THe problem is that they are really for teachers, not children. That is, schools teach children what the teachers are trained to teach. Thus children are subjected to courses on all manner of things that are of no use to them and will probably bore the majority. I was bored the entire time and learnt next to nothing. TV taught me far more.

Better to get rid of them and let the market determine what will be taught. Philosophy will thrive (as it did in Ancient Greece - Plato's academy wasn't state funded).

I was a math teach for five years, so I have my opinions.

1. Schools are designed by the state for a few reasons.
a. Create citizens that can read and thus contribute to a Democracy
b. Create citizens that can do jobs that society needs
c. Babysit so parents can work

So where does formal logic fit in with this? I don't mean logic, I mean formal logic. Formal logic is mostly academic in society, and really a form of math. As you noted, it is examples of logical fallacies that are valuable, and this is often taught through English classes through the evaluation of literature.
Whereas the math-like formal logical part of education is taught by math itself.

Both fields appear to have more immediate use towards the above goals. As such I just don't see room for an entire course on logic except as an extracurricular like debate class.

Probably not. I've only worked managing school districts as part of cities I've managed or districts I've consulted for, so I don't know much about the pedagogy here. That said, if you look at the cognitive science research on how learning occurs, it appears that context and the ability to assimilate new knowledge into an existing web of context is crucially important. There is a good book called "The Knowledge Gap," that goes into this.

Already, it seems like we spend too much time drilling kids on skills in order to improve their test scores and not enough time on content. The thing is, research suggests content context is essential for building up skills.

I went to a very poorly performing school district that would lose 75-80% of students before graduation. I was pretty terrible at math. It seemed like nothing more than a vague set of arbitrary abstractions, useful for nothing but passing tests. My big question "why is the order of operations what it is?" was met with "because you will get a wrong answer on the test otherwise."

I did fine in math in college now that it was tied to content and I understood use cases and had a quant heavy course load in graduate school, success in a quant heavy field, taught myself several programming languages, etc. The reason I couldn't hit the low bar for expectations in 10th grade math, and probably why hardly anyone else could, is because it was divorced from anything interesting.

Now I love math. It's philosophically extremely interesting. Formal logic could very easily go the same way. We should instead be doing a lot of content, with a focus on debate and critical thinking. We should teach science as it actually works, as an imperfect process of exploration and testing, not as a long list of facts. We should go over how we know what we know, and why some people think we don't know what others think we do (you could do the Hard Problem with middle schoolers if you simplify it enough). This is where all the meat is; put the critical thinking into tangible questions about life everyone has.

Then, when they're older they can learn abstract symbolic symbols, which will come naturally because they will be used to doing logic semantically. They should already know all the common fallacies, the formalism needs to be a capstone not the base. That's my $0.02 anyhow.

1. Should courses in logic be mandatory? By that I mean courses to teach students how to identify and refute logical fallacies in everyday life? If yes, at what stage, and to what extent? — Elric

A lot of educational standards are based on teaching logical processes to students and are included in most subjects. Much depends on the teachers actually being able to have the time and conditions necessary to do the teaching, and the students desire and ability to learn.

Having students learn the official names for fallacies is not really necessary. They can do that later if they have a need for it in their university studies.