Atheism

This is an interesting issue - I worked as a high school teacher for a while and all the "real" teachers were always discussing the idea of critical thinking and how to teach it. It seemed to me the critical thinking lessons were simply the assignments to do something the students did not know HOW to do. The admonition "Well? Figure it OUT!" was the driving command. So in a way, life's challenges are everyone's lessons in critical thinking whether they realize or not. To be sure, we can prepare children better or worse for those challenges - in some degree by whether they learn rote facts in school, or spend more time in actual problem-solving and learning to do collaborative activities.