I learned critical thought from my parents from an early age and, as I went through my teens I was developing into an engineer (we're (generally speaking) detail-oriented people) and subsequently was also taught in school-university to pay attention to details to reinforce this skill. I've known people in the past who took critical thought courses in college and, to be honest, they didn't gain much if any useful knowledge from them as far as I could tell. Knowing what I do now I suspect those teaching this skill were DS plants making sure their students left with the illusion of having critical thinking skills, but not the actual skills.

When the Twin Towers were demolished on 9-11 I distinctly remember an architect on TV saying that it was impossible for them to collapse like that, impossible for even the impact areas to appear as they did (according to the narrative) due to strength of materials, etc. And NOTHING of this nature ever appeared again on TV in the weeks and months following. I'm not a structural engineer, but this isn't rocket science either (or maybe it is, technically, though not the complex aspects) and even I knew the stated narrative was impossible. The fact that it was not made as an open debate, but rather "counter experts" were brought in to quash that line of reason and then it dropped out of the discussion completely was a very big red flag.

Intuition can be a huge asset to critical thinking and I'm of the opinion that many facets of education can be implemented to hone one's intuition. I have a LOT of ideas about what needs to be taught to youth going forward, but I truthfully have no idea what may be good resources currently available for teaching children critical thought today. There are educators and former educator anons who may be able to chime in on this topic. The one thing I'll add is that the Bible is, in my opinion, a good resource for honing one's awareness. I know there are some here that are anti-religion, but if one reads the Bible as they would any other text, trying not to allow themselves to be clouded by skepticism and derision as they read, I think they may find there's quite a lot of useful education contained in Scripture.

I don't have a clear recollection of my younger years' education, but a general sense that the bar was set high for expectations and students were pushed to strive towards that bar, to rise higher if possible. I'm guessing there are many educators in the marxist-infested current education system that actively work to promote the opposite of excellence. I could go on (and on and on...), but I'll cap it here as I've been particularly verbose today for some reason (and need sleep). Mea culpa.