Teach Critical Thinking in Public Schools?

I see that Left_Hand_of_Dorkness, Chronos and others are taking care of the caricatures that one can expect from Conservapedia.

Just taking one apart, one point was about misuse of statistics in discussions of gun regulation, on that one one should remember the debacle from the part of gun right proponents about lead in shots contaminating the ecosystems in the USA. Groups like the NRA even did reach for classic climate change and tobacco cancer connection denial tactics like pointing at research they funded to show that there were doubts about lead from bullets being the main contaminant.

Not convincing in the end, but I did see that the website the NRA had setup for that tainted evidence was removed. Even so, I would not be surprised that there are to this day many on the right wing bubble of information that are not aware of how wrong the NRA or many of the opponents to not allowing lead in bullets are.

Looking at proper science sources can then lead to proper policies, that even Republican Governor Schwarzenegger saw then the banning of lead in bullets as a good policy.

As for the still current president’s minions:

End note: Since this study was published, a setback occurred. In 2017, in spite of the hundreds of scientific papers proving the serious toxicity of lead ingestion to humans, animals, and scavenger birds, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, on his first day in office, rescinded the prohibition of the use of lead ammunition on most federal lands. So far, in the United States, California is the only government to ban lead ammunition for hunting wildlife.

Looking at proper scientific sources is one big element that the great late James Randi used in his skeptical training courses that are free to use in schools, based on the work by Dr. Harriet Hall, concentrating mostly on quack medicine such as Homeopathy, the courses are available at the James Randi foundation. Their methodology can be applied to other issues such as lead in bullets, other critical thinking courses are available too.

As for checking for good sources in the internet age, the Crash Course people have come also with a very good course on how to check for proper and good information:

Navigating Digital Information (11 fifteen minute episodes of explanations with animations)