Title: Education - Critical Thinking Skills in Schools and Life
Headings: 
WHAT is Critical Thinking?
Critical = Evaluative
Characteristics of Critical Thinkers
Beneficial Uses of Critical Thinking
Knowledge + Creative Thinking + Critical Thinking → Productive Thinking .
WHY should we teach Critical Thinking?
Critical Thinking in Schools
HOW should we teach critical thinking?
LEARNING  Critical Thinking (outside school) — Educating Yourself
TEACHING Critical Thinking (in school) — Strategies & Activities
Teaching Strategies to help students improve their
Accurate Understanding and Respectful Attitudes
Causes and Effects of
Motivated Reasoning
WHAT is motivated reasoning?
WHY do people use motivated reasoning? — CAUSES
over-confidence by individuals and groups:
HOW does motivated reasoning affect critical thinking? — EFFECTS
by selecting their evidence:
by adjusting their logic:
by adjusting their values:
by adjusting their ethics:
Motivated Reasoning can be Intelligent Reasoning
Two Analogies — Lawyer-vs-Judge and Soldier-vs-Scout
Avoiding Postmodern Relativism
The Ethics of Critical Thinking

Content: While not synonymous with good  thinking, CT is a pervasive and self-rectifying human phenomenon. The  ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed,  trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation,  honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing  to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent  in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of  criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results  which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry  permit. Thus, educating good critical thinkers means working  toward this ideal. It combines developing CT skills with nurturing  those dispositions which consistently yield useful insights and  which are the basis of a rational and democratic society." { the ending-quotation is from "Delphi  Report" consensus statement, The Executive  Summary for Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for  Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction, Executive Summary & Expert Consensus from InsightAssessment.com with links for MORE }
Education in critical  thinking offers an alternative to a drift toward postmodern relativism,  by emphasizing that we can "distinguish between  facts and opinions or personal feelings, judgments and inferences, inductive  and deductive arguments, and the objective and subjective. { MCC  General Education Initiatives}" Critical thinking encourages us to  recognize that our “rationally justifiable confidence” in a claim  can span a wide range, from feelings to fact and everything in between. Three  Categories of Questions explains why, because students don't recognize  questions involving "reasoned judgment" (which  are neither fact nor opinion), they "fail to  see the difference between offering legitimate reasons and evidence in  support of a view and simply asserting the view as true." You  can see samples from The  Art of Asking Essential Questions. Critical Thinking in Schools
HOW should we teach critical thinking?