[Cavernio]

"but I think it only holds for a very select few people who had been brought up with parents who could guide them through the self-learning process."

But but...how can you truly guide someone to self-educate themselves while not telling them what's right and wrong, thereby making it not self-learning at all? Paradox!

In all honesty though, I'm not sure that critical thinking is something that can be taught. The requirements for it, IMO, seem to be 1) a decent brain, and 2) the opportunity to be privvy to various sides of arguments, revolving around numerous topics (basically, exposure) and 3) the motive to ponder those arguments for yourself (or I suppose someone forcing you to ponder them would also work) and finally 4) the time required to do 3 and 4.

As far as having everyone be educated because everyone because everyone plays a part in voting for who has 'control' of our country, that doesn't seem quite right, but for me to get into that would be very off-topic. Suffice it to say that I agree with the outcome we want Arch, but I disagree as to the why.