Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
Frankly, if any course should be mandatory, I think it should be some sort of philosophy - teaching people how to rationally and objectively consider questions and form ideas. Though actually that one seems to me appropriate for high school as well.
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I've long thought that's the biggest deficiency in our education system. How to identify rhetorical fallacies. Understanding cognitive bias. Getting at truth through relentless criticism and a contest of ideas rooted in logic. There's no reason the socratic method of debate should be confined to law schools. This sort of thing used to be a standard element of education.
However, the notion that reason can be employed to bring us close to objective truth runs afoul of the post-modern and relativist ideologies that have come to dominate whole fields of academia. Not to mention how uncomfortable most students today would feel having every belief or argument subjected to the hammer and tongs of rational analysis. It would make some people feel bad, and we can't have that.
But the biggest problem might be in finding enough instructors for such a course. Sad to see a cornerstone of Western thought and the Enlightenment fall into obscurity, like learning to play the violin.