The problem is that every few years a fad sweeps education whose substance is, "We need to teach (critical thinking, learning, etc), not facts." And then they try to teach that without teaching facts. And it doesn't work.
The reason it doesn't work is that learning a body of facts is a necessary prerequisite of learning to think. Obviously it isn't sufficient to learn facts, but it is necessary.
Now which facts you learn is somewhat arbitrary. For instance if you're reading something about history and it mentions a date in the early 1600s, it will be easier to gain perspective if you have some context for what was going on around then. It doesn't matter whether that context is the founding of Jamestown or the 30 years war, as long as you have some context.
For another example, I have absolutely no need to know that the lines, "'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, / A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark" is an allusion to the Garden of Eden. But the act of having figured it out, and then seeing how that original sin causes all of the others in Hamlet helped improve my thinking skills.
So yes critical thinking. Yes learning. However any attempt to teach those without also teaching a bunch of facts (most of which will be irrelevant to the future of most of your students) is bound to fail.
The facts are not irrelevant. The kind of critical thinking you will gain after learning about medical experimental protocols is not the same critical thinking you will learn by doing needlework.
The teaching of critical thinking is not the only value we have. As a society we value having well-rounded children. Personally at a minimum I would like the education system to teach all of the following to students: enough history to understand the broad scope of civilization, the political system and recent history of their region and country, geography, their primary language, the basics of a secondary language, basic first aid, math and science. Note that this is a minimum, and I hope that students learn more than this.
This leaves a lot of latitude. Within each area you have choices to make. But no matter what you're going to be teaching kids about a lot of things that they don't necessarily have an interest in.
The reason it doesn't work is that learning a body of facts is a necessary prerequisite of learning to think. Obviously it isn't sufficient to learn facts, but it is necessary.
Now which facts you learn is somewhat arbitrary. For instance if you're reading something about history and it mentions a date in the early 1600s, it will be easier to gain perspective if you have some context for what was going on around then. It doesn't matter whether that context is the founding of Jamestown or the 30 years war, as long as you have some context.
For another example, I have absolutely no need to know that the lines, "'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, / A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark" is an allusion to the Garden of Eden. But the act of having figured it out, and then seeing how that original sin causes all of the others in Hamlet helped improve my thinking skills.
So yes critical thinking. Yes learning. However any attempt to teach those without also teaching a bunch of facts (most of which will be irrelevant to the future of most of your students) is bound to fail.