The school system does *not*
> teach critical thinking, though there is a certain meretricious
> playacting of it, and plenty of phony claims made about it.
Last week on NPR--I landed there accidently, I swear--I heard some reporter retort a racist-Christian tirade about how Islam discourages (bans?) critical thinking by pointing out that that's not true because Muslims hold college degrees at the same rate as Christians. That was the only data point given for the existence of "critical thinking."