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Critical thinking is a skill, an approach. It could be applied in virtually every lesson in every subject. What does this really mean? What would its negation really mean? What are the assumptions behind it? Could they be wrong, perhaps subtly? What is the evidence for it? Could there be errors in the explanations of the evidence? Are there possibly limits on its applicability? And so on.

Of course there are other pedagogical desires that are just as important. The knowledge, organizing concepts, attitudes etc. must be imparted. But critical thinking is a cross discipline attitude that it is also beneficial to impart and building it into the curriculum is a good thing.

I shan't take offense at your "fuzzy thinking liberals" crack. The fact is liberals are among the least critally thinking people I know. But the lack of this skill isn't a purely liberal thing. Just look at the typical deevo posting to these threads. I assume they are generally conservative but are unable to think critically.

Critical thinking is a skill, an approach. It could be applied in virtually every lesson in every subject. What does this really mean? What would its negation really mean? What are the assumptions behind it? Could they be wrong, perhaps subtly? What is the evidence for it? Could there be errors in the explanations of the evidence? Are there possibly limits on its applicability? And so on.

Sounds wonderful. So when we've spent a semester applying this to the second law, we can move on and cover the other 80 or 90 basic principles we cover in general chemistry. And in 10 years or so, the students can move on to their sophomore year.

With all due respect, your posting betrays the very typical ignorance humanities types have about how science is taught, and more fundamentally about how science proceeds. Scientists - very good ones - went back and looked at the fundamental intellectual structure of thermodynamics perhaps 100 years after the important discoveries, and we cover them, somewhat, in advanced graduate courses. But if we did this at the introductory stages of chemical education, the students would graduate knowing almost no chemistry.

Back in the good old days, we taught elementary math. by rote. Kids learned tables; they learned algebra by learing to apply basic algorithms; they memorized and learned to apply trigonometric formulas. Oddly enough, in being taught this way, a lot of students were able later to divine the fundamental principles behind mathematics, and almost all of them learned at least how to figure. Now, we try to teach them 'fuzzy math', letting them explore what addition and multiplaction 'mean'. And they don't learn math at all, most of them.

You can't truly think critically in a field until you've mastered it. No undergraduate student has mastered a scientific field; there just isn't time. Trying to pretend they can in a meaningful way think critically in the way you propose about basic principles is an empty, faux-intellectual exercise, and wastes everyone's time; the student's, and the teacher's.