What if we give up on Critical Thinkers?

I am really dismayed to hear people talk, especially
teachers about the government program "No Kids Left
Behind". In our state we have the SOL's that every
student must pass in order to move ahead one grade.
The students today are ruling the roost as they
used to say, and teachers have to work really hard
to teach them and to keep them in line. That is
another blog all together.
Critical Thinking.
If we don't start back to teaching the students
critical thinking, how is this future generation
going to be able to make decisions, and how are they
ever going to be able to run the country?
Most kids that I meet want instant gratification,
have shallow values, and are looking for quick fixes
on everything.
By learning to learn in order to pass the SOL's is
not leaving the teachers any time to teach intellectual
traits, standards or abilities at any time. The students
themselves are self educating themselves at home in
front of the TV or through friends, and trying to
decide how to make sense of the world through the media.
They need to become more intellectually fit.
A well educated person is able to reason quite directly
and deliberately.
We must develop students who reason through what
they are learning so as to grasp the logic of their
reasoning, students who know clearly the difference
between coming to terms with the logic of something
or merely rotely memorizing it.
This is what we are teaching them by remembering
the answer for the test instead of developing
their own thought on how they came up with the answer.
Teachers need to design instructions so that students
take command of the logic of their own thinking while
they are thinking and through that insightful grasp,
they can improve it.
How can we teach our students to begin to recognize
the inferences they are making, the assumptions
they are basing these inferences on, and the point
of view, and the perspective on the world that they
are beginning to form or inherit?
How can we help students to recognize how they are
reasoning about the world?
They need to gain command over their thinking.
They need to build intellectual muscle to overcome
inherent self deceptive tendencies.
They need to cut through the propaganda and learn to
think for themselves.

You can take a simple inference and look at it several ways.
The kids today take the most logical route, what they have
heard or seen and do not tend to think of the different
inferences.

For example:

Situation: A man is sitting on the side of the road
Assumption: only lazy people sit on the side of the road
Inference: That man is lazy.

Situation : A man is sitting on the side of the road
Assumption : anyone sitting on the side of the road could
be in trouble.
Inference : that man may need help.

These are simple. But the students today are given mostly
questions of multiple choice and they are to choose the
most logical answer. This is simple enough but does not
teach them critical thinking about the other possibilities.
Critical Thinking is important to their future and the
world's future. We need a generation of quality thinkers
who think for themselves and make the right decisions
based on clear and perceptive thinking. It just doesn't
seem to me that the kids today are learning this in
school. Only time will prove me wrong....or right.