Monday, November 29, 2004

Logic

Some days ago I have lunch with someone. He told me that, contrary to the perhaps commonly perceived image, law students are extremely weak in logic. According to him (who worked as an IT staff in a university law department), those students simply can't think anything in a logical way. He wonders how these people can go out and "debate" in court.

I think this is not only true in law but also in many different fields. Does the department really require a potential student to have logical thinking? (Require them to have an A in Pure Maths?) Handling divorce and things likethat does not require any logical thinking.

This lead to something that I've been wondering for long, and that is, why we couldn't teach logic earlier in high school - not just in Pure Maths, but in lower levels so that everyone, even those in the arts stream, know some logic. People find difficulty in maths, and often this is because they don't know the logic implicit in it.

I know there are some people that can never hope to understand any logic, but teaching is better than doing nothing. If a very small percent of people can think a little bit more clearly, then for example we might have a bit fewer people who believe less deeply in certain religions, and then we might not have another 4 years of Bushitism.

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