No, they're taught to memorize asinine data, and then repeat it in tests.
I love the pathetic fallacy. But seriously. How can data be asinine?
I don't think critical thinking can even BE taught. People who are idiots will always be idiots, they just might have more shit in their shit-arsenal to make an insipid argument with.
That's not true. The problem is that it can't be taught
quickly. It is more than reading a single textbook/critical analysis, more than a course of 50 (or however many you fit in one semester) lectures, more than a few tutorials a week. It comes from developing the skill as a habit, thinking of it as a skill and not as a series of discrete data. And to be honest, I don't think I've seen anybody teach it well.
In my opinion critical thinking should be taught at a much younger age than it is. It should be taught in some form in kindergarten or very early elementary school. But school really isn't about critical thinking, is it?
By their very nature teaching logical and critical thinking to a child would be kind of a waste of time. Instead, nurturing and encouraging curiosity would be much more useful here, and would lead to a much better thought process later in life. I reckon it should be encouraged as a skill (so no discrete classes per se, but integrated into every single course) from about 13/14 onwards.
Yes. The problem you are talking about could be contributed from Anime, Video Games, and the crazy fuckin' cartoons being played on TV. That's my take anyway. American culture is always about MORE MORE MORE, and right now that means MORE WEIRD CARTOONS. The college classes I've taken are more logical than anything I've heard my parents or other people's parents talk about. Science has come a long way since the 1960s and likewise so has the material taught in schools. But, I grew up in a premier part of the country, so maybe it's not like this everywhere....
But then, we still get things like the vaccine/autism thing, the whole debacle about the texas education board, the evolution/creationist debate, etc. So maybe you're the exception, rather than the rule?
In my experience, however, students were more or less given the answers. As GTaudiophile said, regurgitation is the name of the game. You can teach facts this way, but it is no way to teach kids how to think.
But that would mean teachers would have to take more time to engage with their students. Which would mean more teachers, to get a lower student-teacher ratio to make this feasible. But that would mean either ramping up the education budget, or introducing pay cuts. And that would be a horrible way to go, especially for the teachers that work hard to do this already with the class sizes they already have.