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[yardwork]

131. I was taught about fallacies in 7th grade English,,

That would have been in the early 1970s. My English teacher was older and followed an "old-fashioned" curriculum. We learned how to diagram sentences - an invaluable skill that teaches the logic underlying English sentence structure, that I've made good use of in my career. We also read essays on logic and were taught about various fallacies.

I can recognize "straw man" and "no true Scotsman" arguments on DU every day. Humans use these and other fallacies without thinking. Other forms of propaganda are more deliberate.

In 8th grade we were taught from a history textbook that was centered around showing biases and how they were used throughout American history. We studied political cartoons, read essays from the 18th century, and dissected the underlying biases.

This early education served me well. It's all gone now from public education (and certainly from the religious-based charter schools), as far as I can tell. Recent efforts to begin teaching American History based on original documents have been suppressed as "woke."

We're going into a Dark Ages.