It would help some. But we’d get much better politicians if we had better civics education.

Might be more advantageous if it were a specific college class.

Democratic systems are built on the assumption of an informed populace (or at least an informed electorate), but it doesn’t matter how much information is available if someone cannot understand it. As such, the ability to analyze arguments is a crucial skill. Just as an illiterate person cannot become well read by living in a library, a person who does not understand logic (including the difference between good and bad reasoning) cannot successfully navigate the barrage of arguments that come our way every single day. So like you say, basic reasoning skills are a form of mental self-defense.

My own experience as someone who teaches both philosophy and argumentative writing bears out your suspicion. This is anecdotal, of course, but even my worst students tend to abandon their bad arguments and come away with a better grasp of what a good argument looks like. In fact, I find that my students are often most interested in the parts of class that teach them how to recognize and avoid logical fallacies and wish they had been taught it earlier. And this makes sense. Understanding Locke or Descartes might never come up again in their life, but straw men and appeals to consequence certainly will.

@zenvelo What @josie seems to be suggesting, though, is that understanding the difference between good and bad reasoning is part of a better civics education. Teaching people about government and citizenship won’t really help if they can still be mislead by the most blatant lies about one’s civic obligations, after all.

@kritiper Not everyone goes to college, and not everyone should. So while I agree that college students should take such a course, it would probably be best to start as early as possible.

I took two sections of Logic one in junior high school and one in high school both part of the math curriculum.
I took a semester in a public college – - Introduction to Symbolic Logic.

Faulty logic or emotionally driven decisions are shown in recent election with dead pimps getting elected.

A basic course in statistics might also help. Though this is not related to politics, I wonder how many people can spot the fallacy.

Someone takes a test for a disease and it gives a positive result. For people who have the disease, the test results are positive 90% of the time. Therefore there is a 90% chance that the person is carrying the disease. Do you see the fallacy? What additional information is needed?

It’s really shocking to me to think that schools aren’t teaching some logic or questioning what they are told. Is that really true? They aren’t teaching the scientific method? They aren’t teaching current events? They aren’t teaching debate? Nothing? I doubt it.

Maybe it’s being taught later than we would like, maybe it isn’t being demonstrated in elementary schools, but by high school I would assume there is some discussion on questioning and logic. It wouldn’t hurt to have more of it though, no matter how much is being done, it doesn’t seem to be enough.

Of course, the a hurdle you will have is Christian fundamentalists probably question the least, and they also probably go to private school and home school the most. Not to be confused with the average Christian, and I’m not stereotyping homeschool either, I know atheists who home school, I’m only saying the most extreme among the Christians maybe are less likely to be in public schools.

As a side note: I think we should have exchange student programs of summer programs where children spend time in a different environment. City kids in rural settings, or Northerners living out West, West Coast spending time in the Deep South, Southerners in New England, etc.

I completely agree with @SavoirFaire. I’d love to see these being taught as early as late elementary school and into middle school, being reinforced throughout high school. Just as you might get a red circle around grammatical errors, teachers should be calling out fallacies in the same manner. I also think the media should start pointing out logical fallacies and why the arguments are flawed as part of their due diligence and duty to present the truth. Logical fallacies are objective and should be called out whenever they occur.

I’d love to see a show where people debated subjects and whenever a logical fallacy is made, the conversation is paused a buzzer goes off and a panel of charismatic logicians explains the fallacy and the offender gets an X or something next to their name for every offense. I think that would me a much more meaningful way for the audience to appreciate a debate.

I don’t believe so. Perhaps the qualifications for office should change. Currently, anyone who can pass a background check, doesn’t owe back taxes and meets other minimum requirements can be elected to local office in most cities across America.

Even more important than logical reasoning is an appreciation of how news is gathered and disseminated and how facts can be manipulated and distorted. Reason must build upon facts and if the facts are disputed or put in doubt logical reasoning will fail.

@flutherother I’d flip that on it’s head. The foundation for the soundness of an argument is that it’s logically valid and the premises are true. If the structure of the argument is logically invalid, then it’s not even worth evaluating the truth of the premises. The first step is evaluating the logical structure of the argument before breaking down the premises.

We did learn about rhetorical strategies and logical fallacies in school, though it was primarily only one unit in one class (specifically AP Comp in 11th grade, a class that not everyone took). I still remember what I learned in that class today and I found it very helpful. So yes, I think it is a good idea to teach such things. Critical thinking is an important skill.

@SavoirFaire Well, I did say it MIGHT be more advantageous…and there could be both. Twice as advantageous!!