Teaching logic: Cracking the hard nut

Abstract

Two questions are addressed in this article: 1) How to make the students realize the importance of logic and 2) how to teach the logical rules. The teacher may begin their logic class with an attempt to answer 1. Logic studies and records the basic moves of intelligence. When it analyses an argument A, it splits A into small steps. If each unit step seems to be intuitively right, then we accept A to be a valid argument. This "splitting" is the special skill of the logician. This skill helps one evaluate an ordinary argument in our day-to-day life. Question 2 is directly related to the didactics of logic. One may teach the rules of logic by demonstrating fallacies, i.e., by comparing the rules with their corresponding non-rules. If the teacher shows how the violation of a rule leads one to an intuitively undesired conclusion the student, learns the importance of rules.