What subjects would you introduce into public education?

[TheKwas]

Not sure if this is politics or logic, move to where most applicable.

Short intro: I went through the Catholic school system my entire life (til university obviously), and looking back I don't really remember learning anything, at all, from the multiple religion/christian ethics classes I had to take. Not a single thing.

From what I understand, the public school system has more time for other subjects in elementary school and some additional optional classes and some BS character-building class in high-school to make up the difference between the two schooldays. So I've been thinking, what exactly could I have learned in school instead of religious bullshit?

I've come up with three classes I would love to see introduced to public schooling.

Logic and Critical Thinking (High school): I'm sure most people here can get behind this one (and I think it was even suggested here before). Don't bother with the formal logic or the symbols, but just focus on logical principals and fallacies like red herrings, pos hoc, strawmen, occam's razor, ad absurdum, causation, Loki's Wager, No True Scotsman, ect. Leaving this sort of content for art majors in Universities is a disservice to the populace, as this content is useful in everyday life and should be utilized by everyone.

Historical and Modern World Religion class (elementary school): This is the one proposed by Daniel Dennet numerous times. I can't tell you how ignorant many people are on religious that are not their own. Not only will this childern will when dealing with citizens of different religions in multicultural countries like Canada and America, but it will help childern realize that they don't automatically become a follower of their parent's religion and that their parent's religion is the only one out there. I suspect much belief is built off the intial assumption that there is little beyond their religion, but exposing these individuals to the fact that there have been thousands of religions in the past may help them get over this delusion.

General history of Science (high school): You can basically call this class whatever you want, all I want this class to do is read Carl Sagan and perhaps some other popular science writers. Science throughout elementary and high-school is very dull and tends to drive students away. If we can educate the children about the rich history that scientific thought as, along with the significance associated with scientific progress and discovery, I suspect this trend can be reversed (I know reading Sagan and others did that for me).
I've noticed a tendency for young individuals to gravitate towards the social sciences primarily because they see it as A)significant to the world and B) intellectually liberating. In politics and history class they are not forced to memorize formulas (and hardly ever dates), but instead they are allowed to ponder issues over, play around with ideas, and come to their own conclusions by their own wits. If we allow this sort of intellectual freedom within a scientific context (not actually allowing them to consider if certain scientific principals are wrong, but rather what are the consequences of scientific discoveries in Saganian style), perhaps they will become interested in the more rigorous aspects of the natural sciences.

What do you think? Suggestions?

[Darth Wong]

Suggested courses:

1) World religions (past and present). People should be aware of all the religions in the world, not just their own. Value-neutral presentation and comparison of all religions must be mandated. Fundie opposition to such a course would probably be violent.

2) Personal business and financial skills. It's amazing how many people have no idea how to secure a loan, or what happens if you keep paying the minimum balance on your credit card, or why it's so fucking important to cover up when you enter your PIN number on an Interac keypad, or the risks involved in different kinds of transactions and investments. Shockingly, they often rely on the people selling these services to educate them.

3) History and Philosophy of Ethics. All of the major philosophies of ethics should be covered. Most of the general population seems quite satisfied to make value judgments on ethics that start and stop with such educated statements as "that just ain't right" or "everybody knows that's wrong". And yet, ethics is quite literally the guiding basis for a huge number of incredibly important decisions in your life. It also comes up regularly in politics, and we expect these kids to become adults with voting privileges. This is another course that fundies would probably attack violently, because they don't believe in teaching any ethics which are sourced outside the Bible.

4) Sex Education and Relationship Skills. Yes, you read that right: sex education should include relationship skills. And yes, they really are skills; people are not born knowing how to do relationships any more than they are born knowing how to fix cars.

In the old days, people would have said that the job of teaching some of these subjects is more properly assigned to the parents. But parents don't teach this shit. A lot of parents don't know it themselves.

[Flagg]

Suggested courses:
2) Personal business and financial skills. It's amazing how many people have no idea how to secure a loan, or what happens if you keep paying the minimum balance on your credit card, or why it's so fucking important to cover up when you enter your PIN number on an Interac keypad, or the risks involved in different kinds of transactions and investments. Shockingly, they often rely on the people selling these services to educate them.

I think this is by far the most important subject lacking in US schools.

[Winston Blake]

Some of these already exist in Australia.

I went to a Catholic high school where Studies of Religion was a compulsory subject. I remember reading lots of boring stuff about Islamic rites of passage. It was essentially 'world religions'. Students at non-religious schools could take it as an elective.

In my Commerce subject we learnt some of the things in DW's Personal business and financial skills suggestion. It was more about basic economics though.

I think Logic and Critical Thinking should be a part of English, because that subject is full of pointless crap and I think writing essays rebutting arguments regarding current news items would be better than writing essays about poetry. Formal symbolic logic can be left to math subjects - simple logical fallacies and debating fit better into English. Also, it would make it compulsory, which is nice.

[lPeregrine]

1) Logic and critical thinking. Enough of telling people what to think, I want people that know how to think. There's a frightening lack of understanding of the difference between a good argument and a bad one in our culture, and this needs to change. Fix this, and a lot of our problems just might disappear.

2) Philosophy of science. On the same thought as the first point... science education in the US is an embarassment. We're producing a lot of people who know trivia facts, but absolutely nothing about WHY science works or how to see the difference between good science and pseudoscience. Without this class, it's not much of a surprise that creationism is doing so well... it's treated as just a case of filling in B instead of A.

3) Ethics, beyond trivial "don't kill people" questions. In all of public school, this was never mentioned. As DW said, there's far too much vague intuition and appeal to divine command here.

2) Personal business and financial skills. It's amazing how many people have no idea how to secure a loan, or what happens if you keep paying the minimum balance on your credit card, or why it's so fucking important to cover up when you enter your PIN number on an Interac keypad, or the risks involved in different kinds of transactions and investments. Shockingly, they often rely on the people selling these services to educate them.

+1 on this.

This is something that's really lacking. As someone who will be leaving the comfortable university life for the real world, this lack of knowledge really scares me. It's exactly as you said... the easiest sources for this knowledge are the ones with an agenda of getting me to buy their service. But not a word of this was discussed in school.

And I think even when the parents do know about the subjects, they don't know how to teach it. I'm the son of an economics professor and my college loans were decided by "dad, which of these banks is the best deal?". If I'd been on my own, I might as well have flipped a coin to decide.

[Ford Prefect]

I went to a Catholic high school where Studies of Religion was a compulsory subject. I remember reading lots of boring stuff about Islamic rites of passage. It was essentially 'world religions'. Students at non-religious schools could take it as an elective.

After a certain year in Catholic education here in Australia, they just stop teaching you about Jesus and instead focus upon other topics. Half is usually on other religions (or just one so it can be more comprehensive), while the other half is all about ethics and morality, as well as questioning just what the hell is going on in God's head. If it's well taught, and you have a good teacher, it can be a pretty useful subject. The teacher I had for a religious course last year was a deacon who was all about encouraging critical thinking in his students; learning how to think critically should be valuable.

Also maths. They already teach maths you say? You could have fooled me with the number of people who just can't handle the stuff.

[K. A. Pital]

Obligatory logic courses. Mathematical logic for all technical specialists, general logic for everyone else.

History and philosophy of science - good pick and I approve of this.

History of religion - basically the same as history of art or anything. Strictly materialistic without indulding into bullshit "God" versions but talking about what god-beliefs (or none) various people in the world had and have now.

Fiscal education (basic economic concepts). Too many retarded people force an economic hardship upon both themselves and their entire country sometimes due to lack of understanding of things.

I'd make some basic macroeconomics obligatory with studies concerining fiscal responbility at personal, enterprise and state level, and internatoinal level too.

This should significantly improve the average joe's understanding of the world (unless he's a class-skipping retard, that is).

[Dooey Jo]

Logic and Critical Thinking (High school): I'm sure most people here can get behind this one (and I think it was even suggested here before). Don't bother with the formal logic or the symbols, but just focus on logical principals and fallacies like red herrings, pos hoc, strawmen, occam's razor, ad absurdum, causation, Loki's Wager, No True Scotsman, ect. Leaving this sort of content for art majors in Universities is a disservice to the populace, as this content is useful in everyday life and should be utilized by everyone.

How is knowledge of myriads of different kinds of fallacies relevant to everyday life? At best, the kids are going to see fallacies in every argument (even where there are none) until the final exam, after which they'll forget all about them. At most, I'd make them understand the Gambler's Fallacy, but you could easily do that in maths class when teaching probabilities.

I've noticed a tendency for young individuals to gravitate towards the social sciences primarily because they see it as A)significant to the world and B) intellectually liberating. In politics and history class they are not forced to memorize formulas (and hardly ever dates), but instead they are allowed to ponder issues over, play around with ideas, and come to their own conclusions by their own wits. If we allow this sort of intellectual freedom within a scientific context (not actually allowing them to consider if certain scientific principals are wrong, but rather what are the consequences of scientific discoveries in Saganian style), perhaps they will become interested in the more rigorous aspects of the natural sciences.

That's a bad idea, because the natural sciences are all about formulas and maths. Not everyone is good at that (perhaps most aren't) and it would be wrong to give them the idea that "ya physics is all fun and fruitcakes and everyone can do it". Natural science without maths is popular science, ie. a dumbed down version that is mostly wrong and crap. People that go around and are just interested in science, but don't actually know anything more than what they read in such popular science publications are some of the most annoying people ever, since they have a tendency to think that they know something.

Also, within that framework, why wouldn't you allow them to consider if the scientific principles are wrong? That way they'll have a better understanding of why they aren't wrong (or why they are useful, more properly).

[Zac Naloen]

1) World religions (past and present). People should be aware of all the religions in the world, not just their own. Value-neutral presentation and comparison of all religions must be mandated. Fundie opposition to such a course would probably be violent.

Pretty much already got this in religious education over here. Covers all the major religions and their basic premises. Doesn't get much focus though so i'd ask for an increased focus on religious education.

2) Personal business and financial skills. It's amazing how many people have no idea how to secure a loan, or what happens if you keep paying the minimum balance on your credit card, or why it's so fucking important to cover up when you enter your PIN number on an Interac keypad, or the risks involved in different kinds of transactions and investments. Shockingly, they often rely on the people selling these services to educate them.

Again, got this here but it's not mandatory when it probably should be.

3) History and Philosophy of Ethics. All of the major philosophies of ethics should be covered. Most of the general population seems quite satisfied to make value judgments on ethics that start and stop with such educated statements as "that just ain't right" or "everybody knows that's wrong". And yet, ethics is quite literally the guiding basis for a huge number of incredibly important decisions in your life. It also comes up regularly in politics, and we expect these kids to become adults with voting privileges. This is another course that fundies would probably attack violently, because they don't believe in teaching any ethics which are sourced outside the Bible.

I can't decide if learning a lot of about a small period or little bits about lots of periods is better for highschool level education so i'd have to put that up for debate.

Philosophy and ethics should definately be taught under the same umbrella. "This happened, we think this about it now because" etc. I recall history when I was at school being very fact orientated ( for the exam) with very little of the why.

4) Sex Education and Relationship Skills. Yes, you read that right: sex education should include relationship skills. And yes, they really are skills; people are not born knowing how to do relationships any more than they are born knowing how to fix cars.

In the old days, people would have said that the job of teaching some of these subjects is more properly assigned to the parents. But parents don't teach this shit. A lot of parents don't know it themselves.

These classes were a joke at school. No one took it seriously so again improved emphasis and better teachers on this particular subject.

[Darth Wong]

I've noticed a tendency for young individuals to gravitate towards the social sciences primarily because they see it as A)significant to the world and B) intellectually liberating. In politics and history class they are not forced to memorize formulas (and hardly ever dates), but instead they are allowed to ponder issues over, play around with ideas, and come to their own conclusions by their own wits. If we allow this sort of intellectual freedom within a scientific context (not actually allowing them to consider if certain scientific principals are wrong, but rather what are the consequences of scientific discoveries in Saganian style), perhaps they will become interested in the more rigorous aspects of the natural sciences.

That's a bad idea, because the natural sciences are all about formulas and maths. Not everyone is good at that (perhaps most aren't) and it would be wrong to give them the idea that "ya physics is all fun and fruitcakes and everyone can do it". Natural science without maths is popular science, ie. a dumbed down version that is mostly wrong and crap. People that go around and are just interested in science, but don't actually know anything more than what they read in such popular science publications are some of the most annoying people ever, since they have a tendency to think that they know something.

I think it would actually be beneficial to simply force kids to take science and math up to a high level, flunk them if they can't do it, and then put an asterisk on their diplomas if they flunk those courses. That would solve the problem of lazy and/or stupid kids avoiding these subjects, and it would also give them a better idea of how difficult and complicated this stuff can be. If anything, I would make high-school math and science much more difficult. It was way too fucking easy when I went, and I know for a fact that academic standards have slipped since then (universities find that they have to spend a lot more time covering what they used to expect students to know already). Hell, I think I slept through high school physics; I used to skip out halfway through every class (with the teacher's permission), because I was always ahead of everyone else anyway. A retarded monkey should be able to do what passes for math and science in high school nowadays.

[Furlong]

I also vote for the Personal Finance class. I took one senior year of high school, and think it needs to be mandatory for all high schoolers in the country.

[Jim Raynor]

Logic and Critical Thinking (High school): I'm sure most people here can get behind this one (and I think it was even suggested here before). Don't bother with the formal logic or the symbols, but just focus on logical principals and fallacies like red herrings, pos hoc, strawmen, occam's razor, ad absurdum, causation, Loki's Wager, No True Scotsman, ect. Leaving this sort of content for art majors in Universities is a disservice to the populace, as this content is useful in everyday life and should be utilized by everyone.

How is knowledge of myriads of different kinds of fallacies relevant to everyday life? At best, the kids are going to see fallacies in every argument (even where there are none) until the final exam, after which they'll forget all about them. At most, I'd make them understand the Gambler's Fallacy, but you could easily do that in maths class when teaching probabilities.

Basic knowledge of logic and fallacies is VERY important, and something that I would teach to every school kid if I had my way. People experience fallacies all the time, whether it's religious bullshit, dishonest TV pundits, or in real-life arguments.

[Darth Wong]

There are three places where the average person is likely to encounter logic fallacies on a regular and repeating basis throughout his life:

1) Politics
2) Advertising
3) Religion

[Adept]

At risk of this being covered by normal school curriculum, I'm gonna have to mention health and nutrition classes. It's pretty sad to see kids routinely buying overpriced, unhealthy shit every single day and thinking nothing of the eventual consequences. Kids hear all about this, of course, but only in passing. They really need to be taught what kind of things a long-term cycle of unhealthy habits will do to you. In fact, I'd merge the sex-ed class and that into a kind of general knowledge class about basic physiological health. It's sad that I had the best general health and least sick days in most of my classes despite being the most chronically ill of all my classmates.

[Nova Andromeda]

I can get behind the following (most of which have been suggested by others here, but I have suggested them all in the past independently):

1. Logic
This would need to be at least 2 full years. It would cover everything from first principles, discrete mathematics, the scientific method, etc.

2. Applied Logic
This would focus on applications of logic to real life. It would be designed to cover the major areas of life including: science, ethics, law, relationships, finances, organizations, etc.

3. Law
It seems utterly irrational to me that people are not educated in law. One would think that society has a huge interest in making sure that people know what the rules of society are.

4. "Social and Relationship Skills and Sex Education"
Most of this has been covered well by Mr. Wong and others above. I would strongly consider integrating social skills into this subject as well. There are many things people could be taught: human social norms, business/work relationship skills (networking, what is/isn't appropriate, etc.), what men and women find attractive by instinct, etc. I'd like to find a way to offer practical courses for relationship skills that must be learned by doing (making friends, approaching women, networking, etc.).

5. "World religions (past and present)"
I like this idea (see Mr. Wong's post) if there is way to avoid religious group X from biasing it.

6. "History and Philosophy of Ethics"
See Mr. Wong's post above. I would also tie this into the applied logic classes (see above) and give the kids a shot at developing a good B.S. detector.

7. Finance and Economics
This course would primarily focus on personal finances, but would also include an overview of modern economics, business, and how an individual fits into the big picture. I would include everything Mr. Wong suggested above.

8. Health
This course would include everything from proper diet to first aid to mental health.

I think it would actually be beneficial to simply force kids to take science and math up to a high level, flunk them if they can't do it, and then put an asterisk on their diplomas if they flunk those courses. That would solve the problem of lazy and/or stupid kids avoiding these subjects, and it would also give them a better idea of how difficult and complicated this stuff can be. If anything, I would make high-school math and science much more difficult. It was way too fucking easy when I went, and I know for a fact that academic standards have slipped since then (universities find that they have to spend a lot more time covering what they used to expect students to know already). Hell, I think I slept through high school physics; I used to skip out halfway through every class (with the teacher's permission), because I was always ahead of everyone else anyway. A retarded monkey should be able to do what passes for math and science in high school nowadays.

-I like the idea of forcing kids to take certain subjects and then flunking them (or at least making them take the test). However, I don't think simply flunking them is sufficient. Their failure in these areas should be reflected in their real world rights. For instance, a person who fails personal finances should not be allowed to take out certain types of loans.
-How about requiring certain core subjects be tested every couple years by every adult as well?
-I don't like the idea of simply making math/science more difficult. They already do that in the U.S. with all the crazy new age teaching crap (e.g., teaching math by drawing stuff or mostly practicing word problems). In addition, something of moderate difficulty for you is probably impossible for the average person. If anything, people should be taught at their own pace within reason and we should do away with the idea of a mandatory time for graduation from high school (again within reason). It doesn't exist in university. Perhaps there should be standard progression tests that could be taken by any student at regular intervals. Testing on core subject could begin based on age.

[TheKwas]

That's a bad idea, because the natural sciences are all about formulas and maths. Not everyone is good at that (perhaps most aren't) and it would be wrong to give them the idea that "ya physics is all fun and fruitcakes and everyone can do it". Natural science without maths is popular science, ie. a dumbed down version that is mostly wrong and crap. People that go around and are just interested in science, but don't actually know anything more than what they read in such popular science publications are some of the most annoying people ever, since they have a tendency to think that they know something.

We're not going to teach them that physics is all make and cupcakes, we're just going to teach them the general overview of scientific discoveries along with the underlying philosophy of science.

Who here has read Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot, The Selfish Gene, ect and has not been tempted to study biology and astronomy because of these books? My personal experiance is that such 'crappy and wrong' popular science inspire me to learn real science and deal with the math. None of these books suggests that science is easy and cupcakey, but they do teach you that there's something inherently valuable and awe-inspiring in the sciences which is worth working through the formulas for, or even that these formulas are even awe-inspiring themselves when viewed in the right context.

I did dick all throughout most of highschool and avoided math like the plague because it was boring as fuck. Grade 12 comes by and I start reading some very basic economic stuff by John Kenneth Galbraith (popular economics I guess?), next few months I retake all my math classes that I need for an eco major in University and pass with flying colors and a scholarship to boot.

[Dooey Jo]

I think it would actually be beneficial to simply force kids to take science and math up to a high level, flunk them if they can't do it, and then put an asterisk on their diplomas if they flunk those courses. That would solve the problem of lazy and/or stupid kids avoiding these subjects, and it would also give them a better idea of how difficult and complicated this stuff can be. If anything, I would make high-school math and science much more difficult. It was way too fucking easy when I went, and I know for a fact that academic standards have slipped since then (universities find that they have to spend a lot more time covering what they used to expect students to know already). Hell, I think I slept through high school physics; I used to skip out halfway through every class (with the teacher's permission), because I was always ahead of everyone else anyway. A retarded monkey should be able to do what passes for math and science in high school nowadays.

Well, I suppose that depends on what "high level maths" means. In Sweden, everyone has to study probabilities, statistics (and possibly some trigonometry too, I don't remember) and physics like basic mechanics, plus basic chemistry and biology (where sex ed is included). Only if you are interested do you have to do higher level things like integrals, differential equations and more advanced physics, and you do it by going to a science or engineering oriented course programme (our last three years of high school works a bit like in a university). In those programmes, high level maths and science are mandatory, but I don't know how good it would be to make it mandatory for everyone. It's not like they are ever going to use it anyway, so it would be better to spend that time on things like economics and history (which are also mandatory here, BTW. As are ethics and world religions). Maybe to give them an idea of how hard it is so they'll have more respect for scientists, but that seem to be more of an American culture thing, so it might not be the best way to mitigate it.

Basic knowledge of logic and fallacies is VERY important, and something that I would teach to every school kid if I had my way. People experience fallacies all the time, whether it's religious bullshit, dishonest TV pundits, or in real-life arguments.

No, basic critical thinking is very important and will help much more in making people resistant to ads and similar propaganda than hammering in a bunch of latin names. You don't need to know the exact formal structure of an Ad Populum fallacy to be able to tell that just because something is popular it doesn't have to be correct. Critical thinking is what you need; criticism of sources and considering what they are actually saying.

Who here has read Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot, The Selfish Gene, ect and has not been tempted to study biology and astronomy because of these books? My personal experiance is that such 'crappy and wrong' popular science inspire me to learn real science and deal with the math. None of these books suggests that science is easy and cupcakey, but they do teach you that there's something inherently valuable and awe-inspiring in the sciences which is worth working through the formulas for, or even that these formulas are even awe-inspiring themselves when viewed in the right context.

I know people that go around quoting The Selfish Gene without actually knowing what the hell they're talking about. The problem is that such books have a tendency to make people feel smart, because they understood something which had the word "science" in it (or think they did, anyway). There's no need to have a course dedicated to reading such literature when you can easily make people interested in science through interesting science experiments, and then you get the benefit of actually teaching them something too.

I did dick all throughout most of highschool and avoided math like the plague because it was boring as fuck.

So make those maths classes mandatory then. Obviously the problem is that high school currently is way too easy.

[Jim Raynor]

Basic knowledge of logic and fallacies is VERY important, and something that I would teach to every school kid if I had my way. People experience fallacies all the time, whether it's religious bullshit, dishonest TV pundits, or in real-life arguments.

No, basic critical thinking is very important and will help much more in making people resistant to ads and similar propaganda than hammering in a bunch of latin names. You don't need to know the exact formal structure of an Ad Populum fallacy to be able to tell that just because something is popular it doesn't have to be correct. Critical thinking is what you need; criticism of sources and considering what they are actually saying.[/quote]

Who the fuck says you need to know a lot of latin names? And I'm sorry, but if the words "ad hominem" are too fucking much for a kid even after proper teaching, then he's a fucking worthless dumbass.

A course that goes over a simple list of common logical fallacies like the ones on the main site would be very beneficial. I went over the same exact stuff last year, in an elective course in my FINAL YEAR of college. I already knew all that stuff from reading SD.net years before that, and thought that it was nice to see logic actually being taught to some people. But that's way too fucking late for everybody else. This is basic shit that any kid can learn, and there's no reason at all to even go into the Latin. "Ad hominem" was the only latin fallacy name used in the course I took.

Teach the fallacies (no need for Latin bullshit you keep dwelling on), give examples, show videos of past debates and ask them to take note of all the fallacies they see, and challenge them to find their own examples of fallacies on politcal commentary shows.

[Dooey Jo]

Who the fuck says you need to know a lot of latin names? And I'm sorry, but if the words "ad hominem" are too fucking much for a kid even after proper teaching, then he's a fucking worthless dumbass.

Why? To most people, things like that would be little more than trivia. It's the reasoning behind it that needs to be covered, not fallacies. What makes a credible source, and related subjects, that should be mandatory, but fallacies are unnecessarily complicating things.

A course that goes over a simple list of common logical fallacies like the ones on the main site would be very beneficial. I went over the same exact stuff last year, in an elective course in my FINAL YEAR of college. I already knew all that stuff from reading SD.net years before that, and thought that it was nice to see logic actually being taught to some people. But that's way too fucking late for everybody else. This is basic shit that any kid can learn, and there's no reason at all to even go into the Latin. "Ad hominem" was the only latin fallacy name used in the course I took.

No, any kid cannot learn it. They can learn the names (in English if you so wish, it doesn't make any difference), but all you'll get are precisely what most people on the internet do when they first hear that there's such a thing as a fallacy; see them everywhere. That doesn't help anyone.

Teach the fallacies (no need for Latin bullshit you keep dwelling on), give examples, show videos of past debates and ask them to take note of all the fallacies they see, and challenge them to find their own examples of fallacies on politcal commentary shows.

I don't know if you know it, but properly identifying fallacies in everyday life is not trivial. The aforementioned Ad Hominem can actually be a perfectly valid argument in, for instance, politics. Do you expect most high school kids to actually understand why? Understanding fallacies requires knowledge of formal logic, but in real life they are almost always presented through informal logic, where things get much more fuzzy and arguments tend to be unsound rather than properly fallacious.

[Jim Raynor]

Why? To most people, things like that would be little more than trivia. It's the reasoning behind it that needs to be covered, not fallacies. What makes a credible source, and related subjects, that should be mandatory, but fallacies are unnecessarily complicating things.

So if you teach the "reasoning behind" it, aren't you teaching the fallacy?

Furthermore, people need this dishonest bullshit brought out in the open, and to be taught why this stupid crap doesn't fly.

No, any kid cannot learn it. They can learn the names (in English if you so wish, it doesn't make any difference), but all you'll get are precisely what most people on the internet do when they first hear that there's such a thing as a fallacy; see them everywhere. That doesn't help anyone.

So show examples of what doesn't qualify as those fallacies as well. That's just as important. Anyone who's argued on the internet has probably been accused of "resorting to insults" (ad hominem) before, even though they added in insults along with legitimate points. Teach what qualifies as well as what doesn't. Not all that hard.

The aforementioned Ad Hominem can actually be a perfectly valid argument in, for instance, politics.

Please explain.

Understanding fallacies requires knowledge of formal logic, but in real life they are almost always presented through informal logic, where things get much more fuzzy and arguments tend to be unsound rather than properly fallacious.

Here's a very easy way to boil it down for kids: to support something, you have to actually support it with REAL evidence. No one gives a flying fuck who said it, whether he's fucking someone other than his wife, if he's a jerk or curses a lot, how popular it is, etc.

I got a variation of that not in any formal logic class, but in freaking history. Whenever the students submitted an essay, the teacher would give an automatic "C" if the thesis wasn't supported by statistics and real sources.

And that college course I mentioned? It wasn't formal logic, it was an elective public speaking class. There were freshmen in there as well (little removed from high school), and they understood it when the fallacies were explained.

Yeah, it doesn't get into the formal logic (not that you need that to understand the fallacies, I never had to study "formal logic" to understand Wong's site), but it's an easy enough way to explain it to high school kids

[Dooey Jo]

Why? To most people, things like that would be little more than trivia. It's the reasoning behind it that needs to be covered, not fallacies. What makes a credible source, and related subjects, that should be mandatory, but fallacies are unnecessarily complicating things.

So if you teach the "reasoning behind" it, aren't you teaching the fallacy?

Furthermore, people need this dishonest bullshit brought out in the open, and to be taught why this stupid crap doesn't fly.

By "the reasoning behind it", I meant thinking critically when considering what is said. Fallacies is a part of that, but it's a more advanced concept and I think the gain of teaching it to everyone would be minimal, as opposed to focussing on things like criticism of sources. I'm going by personal experience on this, but I don't know how it is in the US, maybe outright fallacies are more common for you. But, for instance, citing Wikipedia in an essay is not a fallacy, it's (usually) a failure of critical thought.

No, any kid cannot learn it. They can learn the names (in English if you so wish, it doesn't make any difference), but all you'll get are precisely what most people on the internet do when they first hear that there's such a thing as a fallacy; see them everywhere. That doesn't help anyone.

So show examples of what doesn't qualify as those fallacies as well. That's just as important. Anyone who's argued on the internet has probably been accused of "resorting to insults" (ad hominem) before, even though they added in insults along with legitimate points. Teach what qualifies as well as what doesn't. Not all that hard.

Well I can just imagine some kid having this conversation with his mom:
"Why can't I go out and party? Everyone else can!"
"Because I'm your mother and I know what's best for you!"
"That is totally an appeal to authority!"

The aforementioned Ad Hominem can actually be a perfectly valid argument in, for instance, politics.

Please explain.

Perhaps the most obvious example would be when one politician wants to be voted into some office, and another comes in and tells everyone that said politician has had a history of taking tax money for himself, or that he is a member of a nationalist party and is lying about his motivations. You need the politician's background in order to make the judgement that he will do what he promises.

Here's a very easy way to boil it down for kids: to support something, you have to actually support it with REAL evidence. No one gives a flying fuck who said it, whether he's fucking someone other than his wife, if he's a jerk or curses a lot, how popular it is, etc.

I got a variation of that not in any formal logic class, but in freaking history. Whenever the students submitted an essay, the teacher would give an automatic "C" if the thesis wasn't supported by statistics and real sources.

Of course, and that is what needs to be taught in the critical thinking course, but you don't need to know about fallacies in order to see that something is unsupported by evidence, or that the evidence comes from a dodgy source.

And that college course I mentioned? It wasn't formal logic, it was an elective public speaking class. There were freshmen in there as well (little removed from high school), and they understood it when the fallacies were explained.

Yeah, it doesn't get into the formal logic (not that you need that to understand the fallacies, I never had to study "formal logic" to understand Wong's site), but it's an easy enough way to explain it to high school kids

Well I'd say you need it to get a deeper understanding of how they are (or aren't) actually fallacious anyhow, and to be able spot fallacies that aren't covered. Maybe you can have an introduction to them and cover the largest groups of fallacies.