The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
The Bush regime doesn't believe in funding education because if you fund education you will have a more educated populace. If you have a more educated populace, you will have critical thinking. If you have critical thinking, you cannot push this agenda that they have and you won't have as many people that are so willing to serve in the armed forces for Dick Cheney.
Critical thinking is more than a set of skills and processes and there are many different skills and actions that may be involved in critical thinking;Critical thinking is 'nurtured' in it's development. Nurturing might imply that it is best developed in a challenging environment which is relatively free of threat;
A more detailed, but still uncontroversial comprehensive, definition is that philosophy is rationally critical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world (metaphysics or theory of existence), the justification of belief (epistemology or theory of knowledge), and the conduct of life (ethics or theory of value). Each of these three elements...
Precisely by inculcating a critical attitude, the "canon" served to demythologize the conventional pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which to critically analyze American culture and institutions. Ironically, the same tradition is now regarded as oppressive. The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked.
The purpose of critical thinking... is rethinking: that is, reviewing, evaluating, and revising thought.
The last thing the men behind the curtain want is a conscious informed public capable of critical thinking. Which is why a continually fraudulent zeitgeist is output via religion, the mass media, and the educational system. They seek to keep you in a distracted, naive bubble. And they are doing a damn good job of it.