The only thing that literary criticism ever inspired me to criticize was literary criticism. Perhaps it was simply taught badly, but I received an excellent primary education - if the better schools around can't teach this stuff then I question how many students learn any critical thinking skills from it.

I learned a lot more about critical thinking from history classes. Those obviously have to be taught well, too. The standard regurgitate-some-dates won't impart any critical thinking either. But I think history as a subject is richer soil to grow these skills from, and isn't mixed up with the teaching of both writing and literature at the same time.

The point of the original post was that we devalue literary criticism because it's so often taught poorly. But the same is true for a lot of disciplines!

"""The only thing that literary criticism ever inspired me to criticize was literary criticism. Perhaps it was simply taught badly, but I received an excellent primary education - if the better schools around can't teach this stuff then I question how many students learn any critical thinking skills from it."""

The same can be said for tons of fields. You think the teaching of computer science is really that better?

My post was not an objection to teaching literary criticism. It was an objection to defending literary criticism by appealing to the value of general critical thinking skills.

If someone proposed to cut computer science from a curriculum, would your defense be "but without computer science, students won't learn how to think critically"?

I also think we're in danger of equivocating over the word "criticism" here. Literary criticism shouldn't be assumed to teach critical thinking well just because the names are similar.

"""If someone proposed to cut computer science from a curriculum, would your defense be "but without computer science, students won't learn how to think critically"?"""

Yeah, I would say that. CS can teach a lot about critical thinking, in a way that few subjects can. Programming is a very effective way to test hypotheses and cut through the BS.

If I was to give a list for "critical thinking enhancing courses", I'd also put History and Math up there (also language stuff, spelling and grammar, but as a prerequisite).

So, would literary criticism make the list? I'd say, yes, we need some form of art criticism to enhance a blind spot the other subjects leave to our critical thinking --i.e thinking about things that cannot be reasoned in a 1+1=2 way.

Now, Chemistry, Physics, Biology and the rest, I find secondary in regards to critical thinking.

For example, learning about evolution is not "critical thinking" itself.

That would be learning to argue WHY evolution is more plausible or learning how to find faults in "intelligent design". Or to be able to spot holes and inconsistencies in any theory in general.

I'm not certain that I agree with your point. I love computer science, and credit my interest in programming with the vast majority of my intellectual development, but that doesn't necessarily make it better at developing students intellectually than other fields. As I've grown older and made friends with people passionate in other fields (e.g. mathematics, physics, economics), I've learned that those people have developed similar powers of analysis and logic as I have. Through the lens of my conversation with them, and I can see the intricacies and thought processes of their fields of interest, which developed them much as the manipulations required in CS have for me. JMStewy makes a good point. For the literary-minded, literary criticism may be a great way of honing their abilities. For you and I, computer science and practicing on problems in the digital field train us well. I don't think we can say with statistical certainty that any field (let alone literary criticism) are optimal for the majority of students.