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In the Washington Post today, Jay Matthews offers a thought-provoking challenge to uncritical purveyors of critical thinking programs. "As your most-hated high school teacher often told you," Matthews writes, "you have to buckle down and learn the content of a subject--facts, concepts and trends--before the maxims of critical thinking taught in these feverishly-marketed courses will do you much good."

To some extent, Matthews is states the obvious.  If you don't have anything to think about, critical thinking will likely elude you. Critical faculties atrophy when starved of content knowledge. (Unfortunately, too many low-income students must in fact survive on an academic starvation diet when basic reading and mathematics crowd out important content areas.)

Still, the fact that so many people entertain flabby notions of critical thinking should not discredit the idea. I've personally witnessed dreadful, soulless versions of traditional content-based instruction in some European and American classrooms and am convinced that critical thinking has an important place in discussions of school improvement.  But we have to resist setting it in direct opposition with knowledge. Even in the 21st century, students will have to commit many important things to memor

The best teachers encouraged critical thinking long before anyone uttered the words "21st-century skills."  Our challenge now is to explain exactly what we mean by "critical thinking"--and to help all educators teach it effectively without giving content knowledge short shrift.