Not necessarily true. When I was in high school the debate topic for that year was “Resolved: The Electoral College should be abolished.” I had to research it for a debate we did on a NY high school television show, and I changed by position thanks to developing my argument. I forget which position we had in the debate but it doesn’t matter since you have to understand the other side also.
Here you go:
I just read about an organization near me that was proposing a new private school using the classical trivium of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. There was a public informational meeting on 5-23-22 and a news article on 5-24-22. I don’t find any other information about them, but I am curious to see if their plans come to fruition. I also wonder if they have some sort of unspoken agenda, because when I Google for other “classical education” schools, many of them appear to be affiliated with religious groups. This local “Ulmus Academy” states they are not affiliated with any government agency or specific church, but they don’t unambiguously clarify whether there would be any religious component to their program. I also wonder if they might be rather right-wing. Do they really want kids to reason for themselves, or do they want to groom kids to think that the values taught at their school are logical and rational?
Is there any sort of movement to found “classical education” schools that don’t involve religious indoctrination?
In my experience there is a lot of overlap between conservative politics and conservative aplroaches to education: both involve a tendency to assume the way thongs were done in the past ate likely the best way, unless there is strong evidence to the contrary. And there’s a strong, but not perfect, correlation between people who think like that and strong religious beliefs. And all of that has a strong correlation to “big C” Conservatism and/or Republican ideologies. But it’s more about the underlying mindset than anything. So, for example, the intensity of a person’s committment to Cinservative Ideologies doesn’t really predict how intensely they will feel about a classical approach to education, just that they probably generally favor it.
Looking up the board members of this “Ulmus Academy”, I see that one of them is a choir director at a Catholic church, is running for local office as a Republican, and has voiced objections to mask policies at local school board meetings. I guess I don’t hold a lot of hope that their academy will teach students how to identify misinformation, but will instead teach them to use rhetoric to defend it.
The term rhetoric has always implied to me speaking impressively or persuasively. The intent seems to be to win arguments. Knowledge of logical fallacies seems aimed at picking apart other people’s arguments. Our concern should primarily be making sure our own positions are correct.
What education really needs is an emphasis on making sure we don’t fall prey to false beliefs. Everyone is wrong sometimes and we should be taught to put a high value on finding and correcting our own mistakes. Then we should be taught common causes of false beliefs - ways we fool ourselves, ways we are misled by others who are sincere, and by others who deliberately try deceive us.
My logic Prof at San Jose state gave us a list of 7 fallacies. The next day in public speaking I got the same list as ways to make convincing arguments. Seems there is not academic agreement.