I agree that critical thinking skills are vital. Taking a course in critical thinking is not the only way to gain these skills, however, and so I think the most important question is whether high school students have plentiful opportunities to do this.

In part, this is a matter of curriculum. I suspect that required courses in critical thinking or introduction to philosophy are not the best ways to inspire high school students to work hard on developing critical thinking skills. Instead, I agree with the idea that critical thinking should be taught “across the curriculum,” which is to say should be taught in diverse ways in nearly every course. The trick, of course, is designing excellent curriculum that does this well.

That said, I suspect that quality of teaching matters more than curricular design: it is our relationships with individual teachers that can inspire us to work hard and learn the most, and the most important educational reforms may be those that help our teachers to learn how to inspire as many of their students as possible.