I think students should be tought "how to think" and not "what to think". Teaching what to think is, to some extent, brainwashing. The problem, as you pointed out, is that institutions try to teach "how to think" but fail at it.
IMO, one cannot think without a base of knowledge and facts. To attempt to think without knowledge leads to erroneous conclusions base on what feels good. The profound level of ignorance that I see sometimes in the so-called educated young people of today is bad. Worse, they often don't even realize they're ignorant. And worst of all, some even revel in it and proclaim the knowledge is irrelevant.