Critical Thinking is the Art of Taking Knowledge and Increasing It

  Tonight, I want to kick the same ball I kicked the other day: Critical thinking should be the heart of our education system.
   I never had such a class; There was no Critical Thinking 101. Now, to me, the shortage of such classes points out just how much room for improvement there is in our education system. If critical thinking is one of the most most important things we can teach, and we are seldom teaching it, we stand to make marked improvement.
   So, is critical thinking all that critical? Is it as important as I am claiming? If I am going to argue it is one of the biggest holes in our education system, it falls to me now to make that case.
   Memorization of algebra, science, and so forth is important; Don't get me wrong. The person who doesn't know how to add cannot make change, and thus cannot even fill a job as a store clerk. The person who cannot read likewise misses out on many jobs. I do not say these things are not important, but I do say critical thinking has an importance that goes beyond.
   Learning math, history, and geometry is the accumulation of past knowledge, while the act of thinking is the creation of future knowledge. Critical thinking is the art of taking knowledge and building on it.
    There is no scientist until he learns to think. There are no advancements in society, until someone thinks them up. There are bright ideas, until a little light goes on in someone's head.
   I am simply saying this: If there are ways to encourage the mind to think, we should pursue them. If there are classes and methods ad ways for encouraging thinking, and we are not offering them, are we not limiting what we can do to develop the student intellectually?
   Education reform? It does seem to me that instilling more critical thinking should be one of the most obvious ways of improving our education system.