Are Introductory Courses A Proper Venue for Deep Thought about the Discipline?

An introductory course is the discipline\u27s handshake; it is the greeting that either seals the deal or in varying degrees convinces the learner that this discipline has little usefulness. Given the huge stakes in forming a strategy for the introductory course, how should we structure the course? The argument in this paper is that we should encourage students to think deeply about the discipline. In other words, we should encourage an appreciation for the complexity of the vocabulary, the underlying assumptions, and the kinds of evidence relied on in the discipline in question