The United States, where I went to school. I also want to apply some critical thinking myself and ask "why wouldn't schools have critical thinking as part of their curriculum"?

Teaching critical thinking skills is not some revolutionary idea and it's not like educators want to avoid teaching people how to do it.

> "why wouldn't schools have critical thinking as part of their curriculum"?

"Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."

Page 13: https://web.archive.org/web/20120629111643/http://s3.amazona...

I never felt like critical thinking was part of the curriculum in the United States. I've always been kind of amazed how poorly it's taught if it's taught at all.

Since we're just comparing anecdata at this point (or at least I am), if you have any data/studies or anything like that it would be appreciated.

To be honest I don't want to go into JStor to search for studies that support my viewpoint and lob them at you in a game of citation tennis. But, I will distill my viewpoint down as best I can and leave it at this:

People claim that critical thinking is not taught in schools because it's an easy claim to make when you perceive that so many other people are thinking uncritically. But, make a claim they disagree with and watch how good they become at it. Everyone falls into a trap of thinking that society at large lacks 'common sense' or 'critical thinking' because we all assume our worldview is true and anyone who disagrees must have deficient thinking. Ultimately I think people are taught how to think critically, but the real problem is when they choose to think critically. And that, I think, is a result of human nature, not lack of education.

Sorry, but I strongly disagree with you. Allow me to respond with my own anecdote.

I remember when I was dating a doctor being appalled by her complete inability to think through a problem, and I later learned medical school is basically mass memorization. I am obviously cherry picking medicine here, but if doctors aren't even taught that by the time they're practicing in the United States I think it's fair to say critical thinking is sorely lacking in our education system. She was a neurologist who was unable to help me with my migraines, and I later figured them out on my own using ~drumroll~ critical thinking. I also saw at least a half dozen specialists at prestigious hospitals, all of whom were equally unhelpful in solving my problem. They were all very quick to prescribe pain medication though, in fact it seemed to be the only thing any of them were ever interested in doing. Some of them accused me of lying about my symptoms, and some told me I shouldn't even bother trying to get better.

If US doctors - some of the best educated and most highly trained professionals in the world - aren't good at thinking critically about medicine, I'm not confident that it's being taught in the US. In fact I'm quite confident it's not taught in the US (or at least it wasn't). I was never taught critical thinking in a classroom setting, and I have multiple degrees from the US.

You base this on one doctor though. I have enough life experience to know that some doctors are better at their jobs than others. Maybe that's on the individual. Maybe some medical schools are better than others. I don't know what the explanation is. But I don't think you can extrapolate to "US doctors" in the plural.

I don’t know, this exactly mirrors my experience, and I constantly hear the same from many other people.

Sure, it’s not every doctor. But throw a dart at a map and you’re bound to hit one who’s like this more often than not.

I have seen enough anecdotes like this about medical school to feel comfortable saying that, at the very least, there is no nationwide systematic effort to teach critical thinking within them or the primary and secondary educational institutions that precede them.