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I would very much favor a required course on "Critical Thinking" for high school students in which the entire debate was aired out fully, not as an entire course mind you, because training in logic and rhetoric, epistemology (Theories of Knowledge), and a brief overview of schools of philosophical thought should form the greater part of the course.

What debate? It's a religious debate. I'm with you on the 'critical thinking'....but what are they to be taught?.. that there is no debate in the scientific community, nor among the leadership of the majority of Christian religions. I do not think that 'critical thinking' per say is undertaught in American schools. I think the targets of this 'critical thinking' and the definition of 'critical thinking' are the issue.

training in logic and rhetoric, epistemology (Theories of Knowledge), and a brief overview of schools of philosophical thought should form the greater part of the course.

Won't happen in the Ipod age. IMHO, smart students can educate themselves provided they are not insulated from and discouraged from pursuing knowledge. Perhaps some others would benefit from a 'Critical Thinking' thinking class such as you describe, but I doubt it, and in the liberal USA of teachers, guess what they'll be 'critical' of. A more modest goal in my mind, and an achievable one, is to keep religious dogma out of science classes.

"What debate? It's a religious debate . . ."

You're right in so far as you address the debate among and between religious groups. But as soon as that debate becomes an attack on science itself, and that is clearly the way I view the Creationist/Intelligent Design/Evolution controversy, you have reached a point at which it can be treated on a basis other than pure religious study. High school students, who are some of the most impressionable beings on the planet, can benefit from the development of skills in critical thinking that will enable them to understand the distinct assumptions upon which each side to the debate is basing their arguments. If you do not arm these students with this knowledge, how many of them will walk away from the debate concluding that science is some evil conspiracy of godless atheists bent upon destroying the Christian religion, rather than a discipline rooted in the materialist study of the natural universe? Or conversely, how many students will come to see religious belief and practice as a retreat from intellectual honesty, leading them to condemn religiosity in all its forms? Informed students schooled in critical thinking can avoid either of these extremes.

"A more modest goal in my mind, and an achievable one, is to keep religious dogma out of science classes."

That is definitely part of what I am trying to achieve here ml1954. But I don't think it goes far enough. "Critical Thinking" comes down to a lot of things, but basically focuses upon developing the "tools of rational thought." And do understand, since I may not have made this perfectly clear to everyone, I only want this CreationistID/Evolution debate aired for a very small portion of the class. I might envision it as a one or two day exercise in comparing Metaphysics with Materialism, once students understand the distinction between the two. That's all I have in mind. The other 248 days of the school year I will want them studying quite a bit more; Informal Fallacies of Logical Argument, Logical Rules of Inference and their Application, How Ordinary Language is Expressed Symbolically, What is Philosophy?, What is Epistemology?, What are "Schools of Philosophical Thought"?, What were the major "revolutions" in human understanding? These form the real basis for a course in critical thinking.