There's pretty strong evidence suggesting this isn't a problem. Or if it's a problem, it's not one that schools can solve.
Teaching "critical thinking" is basically a waste of time. You can't do it. It would be nice if you could, but you can't. "Critical thinking" simply doesn't transfer. (Well, they do a tiny bit, if they are done right, but there's more fine print than Facebook's ToS to any claim that you can teach students how to think.)
Let's say you took all those "creative thinking" skills you learnt in networking, did a course on photography, then got a job with a really good photographer. Guess what - you might have decent communication skills, but you'd still come off as a clueless idiot who can't "think creatively" or "solve problems", because you don't have the domain skills and knowledge.
If they've got a solid core of domain skills and knowledge, they can actually think for themselves. If they don't, they'll be clueless, and just try to memorise answers.
Anyone who can tie their own shoelaces knows "there's more than one way to solve a problem". Kids can actually think for themselves, if and only if they understand the domain.
Now, maybe the schools are teaching really badly, and the tests are geared towards forcing students to answer questions rather than solve problem - that's a problem. As in machine learning, getting students to memorise training data just leads to brittle learning. That might be the real problem - the blind are leading the blind, and some teacher who can't network is telling kids to memorise whatever was in the book, because no-one in the class has a clue. That's a recipe for incompetence.
And we know that high stakes tests with rewards for "good" teachers are like paying programmers per LoC. But that's not a problem with standardised tests anymore than code metrics are a problem. Idiots in management can cause issues, though.
I disagree completely with "you must already have domain knowledge to be able to apply basic learning skills within that domain". I've seen people enter new domains and do well, and other enter new domains and do poorly. The difference seems to be the ability to ask "how do the things I do already know interrelate?"
It is a matter of metacognition (thinking about what I know and how it applies) and not being paralyzed by fear of "getting the wrong answer". The former can be taught, and there are teaching methods that show success around the concept. The latter is something that is hard to overcome when people spend 16 formative years being punished when they don't "find the exact, single, and exclusive" answer and not being rewarded for "learning a few ways". (although research also shows that tests that are not binary - that is all points or no points - do a good job of helping with the fear e.g. multiple choice tests that have "wrong" answers that suggest conceptual understanding even if there is a calculation error.)
Teaching "critical thinking" is basically a waste of time. You can't do it. It would be nice if you could, but you can't. "Critical thinking" simply doesn't transfer. (Well, they do a tiny bit, if they are done right, but there's more fine print than Facebook's ToS to any claim that you can teach students how to think.)
Let's say you took all those "creative thinking" skills you learnt in networking, did a course on photography, then got a job with a really good photographer. Guess what - you might have decent communication skills, but you'd still come off as a clueless idiot who can't "think creatively" or "solve problems", because you don't have the domain skills and knowledge.
If they've got a solid core of domain skills and knowledge, they can actually think for themselves. If they don't, they'll be clueless, and just try to memorise answers.
Anyone who can tie their own shoelaces knows "there's more than one way to solve a problem". Kids can actually think for themselves, if and only if they understand the domain.
Now, maybe the schools are teaching really badly, and the tests are geared towards forcing students to answer questions rather than solve problem - that's a problem. As in machine learning, getting students to memorise training data just leads to brittle learning. That might be the real problem - the blind are leading the blind, and some teacher who can't network is telling kids to memorise whatever was in the book, because no-one in the class has a clue. That's a recipe for incompetence.
And we know that high stakes tests with rewards for "good" teachers are like paying programmers per LoC. But that's not a problem with standardised tests anymore than code metrics are a problem. Idiots in management can cause issues, though.