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It wasn't that long ago that Texas nixed critical thinking from K-12 education. The reason given was, and I wish I was making this up, that teaching children critical thinking might cause kids to question their parents and their church.

> How about we just teach kids to think for themselves?

Have you tried? This is something that the majority of people will not do no matter how much you tell them they should. They don't want to, and many can't.

Are you basing your hypothesis on the adult population that has gone through our existing pro-conformity, pro-follow-instructions educational system...?

No.

Well, I don't have kids, but it amuses me greatly to tell my friend's kids their parents don't know everything :)

Education of any kind is indoctrination so the more interesting question is what values we think people should be indoctrinated with.

Yeah, it's not easy, but I'd like to start with something like:

Just because something sounds right/wrong doesn't mean it is. There isn't always an easy answer. "I don't know" is preferable to "simple but wrong".