A related observation; we try to teach critical thinking but it never really gets spelled out how uncritical thinking works; so students are generally unprepared to recognise it in themselves.

Uncritical thinking isn't the same thing as stupid. It is possible to make really great decisions and achieve the preferred combination of wealth, fame and influence by thinking intelligently but uncritically.

Uncritical thinking as far as I can tell boils down to trusting authority figures. That works really well for people with a slight knack for choosing reliable authority figures. You can see it in action when people start treating learned facts as faith-based truths.