Welcome to Conversation for August 15

Over Black Coffee and Gunpowder Tea served with

We start off today with a portion of an education article, from Minding the Campus, discussing a subject no longer part of the education curriculum.

Logic was once a cornerstone of education. Before the 20th century, students studied logic as a standalone subject—a rigorous discipline that honed their ability to reason, spot contradictions, and dissect arguments. In early America, logic held a prominent place in the curriculum. Northern colleges like Harvard prioritized it, with figures like Benjamin Franklin authoring logic primers for youth. And Southern institutions wove logic into rhetoric. Yet today, logic as a dedicated subject has all but vanished from schools, relegated to fleeting mentions in math or writing classes. This retreat from logic education is a grave mistake, and its consequences are evident in the emotional, fallacy-ridden state of modern public discourse.

The decline of logic in schools stems from a confluence of factors. The Progressive Education Movement, aiming to make schooling more accessible, simplified curricula and sidelined subjects deemed too esoteric, including logic. Anti-scholastic sentiment further dismissed logic as overly technical, irrelevant to practical life. Meanwhile, the fragmentation of education into specialized niches—math here, literature there—pushed logic out of the general classroom.

Of course, we have the continuing mashing of teeth over the DC police takeover.