The latter have been the ostensible focus of primary education for a couple of centuries.
- Although we teach people to read, we don't necessarily put enough focus on comprehension and understanding.
- Although we teach people to write, we tend to focus on mechanics rather than on writing clearly and in a way that emphasizes our meaning.
- We don't just focus on functional math, but teach much more complex math to virtually everyone that goes through high school.
You can argue where exactly to draw the line on math (and don't get me wrong I loved math and was very good at it, at least the way it is taught in the US), but I'm not sure everyone needs to become as highly specialized as we attempt to make them in that area at that age.
I think a lot more of the SAT is about gaming their system these days. You could argue that making an "educated guess" by eliminating clearly wrong answers is useful maybe...but i dont think it really stacks up to what their hoping for. I dont think eliminating obvious bad choices is critical thinking, or if it is then it's a very low level of it.
That's not really true; the five-paragraph essay form and it's fractal expansions that dominate grade-school writing is all about clarity and focus on meaning.
It's a horrible as a model for anything other than persuasive writing for a number of other reasons, and given the way the target output influences process, it's an impediment to critical thinking compared to alternatives like thesis/antithesis/synthesis (or IRAC, which while pretty much taught exclusively in the context of legal writing is a very good model for general-purpose analytical writing.)
Maybe their not as horrible as your saying! :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRAC
now I wish I'd gone to law school!
"A-I-D-A. Attention, interest, decision, action. Attention -- do I have your attention? Interest -- are you interested? I know you are because it's fuck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks! Decision -- have you made your decision for Christ?!! And action."
OK, my bad! withdrawn (Can't edit any more). Apologies to pvg