The question that immediately springs to mind in response to the critical-thinking dilemma is whether schools are the answer ... or at least the start toward a solution?
The short answer is "no". The somewhat extended answer is "no, not in their present form". Well, the answer then must be simply more choice in selecting schools, right? No, wrong again.
Though some of even labeled this the "paradigm shift in education", it's nothing of the sort, because this pseudo-answer is that other schools are by nature good. They aren't. Charter schools, elite schools, prep schools, expensive schools ... it doesn't matter what you call them, in the end, they are just schools and the quality of a school is not to be found in it's tuition price tag, nor even in its reputation.
As long ago as 1906, William Graham Sumner, in his seminal work, Folkways clearly showed that schools tend to serve the rather uncritical function of social indoctrination. He wrote:
Schools make persons all on one pattern, orthodoxy. School education, unless it is regulated by the best knowledge and good sense, will produce men and women who are all of one pattern, as if turned in a lathe. An orthodoxy is produced in regard to all the great doctrines of life. It consists of the most worn and commonplace opinions which are common in the masses. The popular opinions always contain broad fallacies, half-truths, and glib generalizations (p. 630).
The only difference school choice may make at all is regarding which particular flavor of social indoctrination you prefer. But, then, we are simply back to the "yes" answer to question 3 of yesterday's quiz.
No, we do need a paradigm shift (if not more) in education, but I'm not sure we're ready for it. And one thing is particularly clear: those who think the revolution is in the choice, really don't want a shift at all.
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