Should Logic be taught as a mandatory subject at school?

[Dances]

So many people do not know how to think logically. Not even a little. We all get the arguments wrong and not everyone is Aristotle but there are some basics

I went to bog standard state schools in the 90s and we were taught:

-To compare and contrast the same news stories from different media sources.
-Critical thinking
-Debate. I vividly remember At age 11 being told to argue against banning fox hunting as part of a debating lesson. Foxes were my favourite animal at the time. I hated it, it made me uncomfortable at the time, and I didn’t do a very convincing job; but I am so grateful now for my English teacher who set the exercise because it was really the first time I was forced out of my comfort zone and had to look at the reasons behind other people’s wants and choices.

I studied formal logic (yeah, I was home schooled.) I disagree that it's not applicable to everyday life. I'm amazed by how often I've seen and identified logical fallacies in newspaper articles etc.

You need to teach both the formal logic, and how to boil an argument down to the basics from a load of emotionally loaded text though.

(I also had the most tremendous head start when I went on to study maths at university, but that's probably less relevant to this discussion.)

Absolutely.
Our education system as been an entire failure, we only memorisation, not thinking logically.
I remember getting penalised in primary school because I couldn’t recall most of the times tables by heart, but I did know how to work it out. But they weren’t interested in giving me a piece of paper and pencil to write the sum out. I also remember explaining to my friend how to work it out, who had memorised them but couldn’t work most of them out, especially the larger numbers. I feel like this is a good illustration of the school system.

In principle I agree, but you'd have to find someone to treat it, and the current evidence suggests that most teachers are incapable of critical thought.

Tangential, but I also think some basic introduction to psychology & the main principles of cognitive behavioural therapy, self esteem etc. Help young people to better understand themselves, their difficult feelings, thoughts and emotions, how their behaviours are intertwined and how they do ultimately have the power to effect these things, challenge their own assumptions about themselves and the world etc.

Logic would be a good thing to teach but I don't think it's the root cause of the issue. From what I can see the real issues are having verboten points of view, tribal loyalties, "no debate", and willful misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the other side of the debate.

In other words, it's not an inability to reason but a refusal to. Politics has long been about winning points over the opposition rather than actively working for the best solution, it's no surprise many other people are following suit.

Most definitely. Instead of what to think, how to think.

Where I come from logic is part of the curriculum. My dad studied philosophy at uni so the concepts we're not foreign to me. That being said... It was taught as a branch of philosophy and not necessarily applied logic. I'm sure 99% of my classmates have completely forgotten about it.

What’s the point? Kids get taught biology and science in school and that doesn’t seem to stop many of them ignoring it when they grow up. The same idiots will just ignore the logical thinking they were taught at school instead.

Debating.
Critical Thinking.
Logic.
The Freedom Programme (as suggested by a pp)
Assertiveness.
Domestic Economics.
Basic food preparation.
Basic food growing.

"Not what to think but how to think!" Was the banner over the RS and Philosophy department at one of the schools I taught in. There was a strong emphasis on critical thinking and philosophy throughout the curriculum we offered each year (simple plato and aristotle in year 8). It was a grammar school though and the Head of Department was fab.

I know lots of subjects have unfortunately moved towards lots of knowledge regurgitation, but critically analyzing sources should be in History and Media Studies. Analysing an argument comes in RS...

We had the basics of this for a while at my school. The trouble was, the (youngish) teacher teaching it clearly really struggled with it and often got multiple choice questions wrong...

None of the above needs to be introduced as a discreet subject, certainly not in years 7 -12. Critical Thinking can be incorporated, like many other things, into the everyday curriculum, as apart and parcel of process.

There is always someone calling for schools and teachers to do "more", but there are not the hours in the day to to do everything in the way that people would like to see.

My personal experience is that many teachers, like many people generally, struggle with critical or independent thought as it is. Teachers are not all academic by any stretch of the imagination.