In our introductory physics and astronomy courses, we very often speak of teaching our students how to think critically and how to employ valid scientific reasoning. However, despite this lofty and often stated goal, we seldom if ever actually provide instruction in critical thinking and logic. Would it not be a good idea to actually include this material at the very beginning of the course? An introductory chapter could provide instruction on how to recognize logical fallacies and how to construct valid lines of reasoning as they apply in the sciences.
This idea came to me last week while reading the first chapters of Jeff Bennett and and William Briggs' text "Using and Understanding Mathematics: A Quantitative Reasoning Approach, Second Edition" published by Addison-Wesley. It suddenly occurred to me that we can never expect our students to learn this stuff unless authors actually include it in their texts and we, the instructors, actually include it in our classes.