To engage in some critical thinking about the article submitted here (which was recommended to me by a private message from a Facebook friend), I should point out that it is by no means clear that critical thinking is a coherent skill that is readily taught.[1] Perhaps the best way to learn critical thinking as a habit is to learn several traditional knowledge domains deeply through grappling with problems as well as through mere exercises.[2] There are some good textbooks on critical thinking for beginning university students, with miscellaneous lessons about various techniques of skeptical thinking.[3]

[1] "Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?" by Daniel T. Willingham

http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Crit_Thin...

[2] "Word Problems in Russia and America" by Andrei Toom (which I think I first learned about from another Hacker News participant)

http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pd...

[3] For example, How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age by Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn

http://www.amazon.com/How-Think-About-Weird-Things/dp/007803...