In addition to that, I've seen a lot of instances where critical thinking is stressed, but means little more than learning to solve x type of problem in x way, as though to mask the fact that students ought to be learning to think for themselves, to look looking something over, come at it from various different angles, and come to understand it and solve x problem on their own, regardless of whether or not the solution found is the normally the accepted way of solving it. It's like packaging up a few nice little shortcuts in life and saying: here, we thought about this and found a quick solution so that you don't have to, now take this, pretend to be clever, and don't give it second thought, because this is all that you need to be successful in the modern world. It's rather frightening.

I tend to have the same issue when it comes to the memorization of names, definitions, dates, and so forth. I'm not saying that memorization is inherently bad (it has it's uses, to be sure). This isn't the 'I suck at this so it must be bad' thread, but one cannot simply memorize a series of things and call it learning in and of itself (chiefly because memorization, and the ability to parrot something back, does not mean that one has reached an understanding of that thing, idea, concept, what have you).