Efforts to develop critical thinking falter in practice because too many professors still lecture to passive audiences instead of challenging students to apply what they have learned to new questions.

Although professors regard improving critical thinking as the most important goal of college, tests reveal that seniors who began their studies with average critical thinking skills have progressed only from the 50th percentile of entering freshmen to about the 69th percentile.

Economists who have studied the relationship between education and economic growth confirm what common sense suggests: The number of college degrees is not nearly as important as how well students develop cognitive skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving ability.

For students, the evolution-creation discussion can be a useful exercise, for it can help develop their critical thinking skills.

You think you are a free thinker? Think again! Whether we like to admit it or not, we are mostly a product of our environment and its social programming

Critical thinking paves way for self correction if there is something wrong in self perception.