ABSTRACT
Teaching students how to argue well has been an historic ambition of American schooling. In the early 20th century, the philosopher and educational reformer, John Dewey, maintained that schools must
cultivate deep-seated and effective habits of discriminating tested beliefs from mere assertions, guesses, and opinions; to develop a lively, sincere, and open-minded preference for conclusions that are properly grounded, and to ingrain into the individual’s working habits methods of inquiry and reasoning appropriate to the various problems that present themselves.
Dewey (1910, p. 28)