Thinking skills are exactly what learning how to think for yourself is. Teaching thinking skills to students. I definitely do not think tests should be subjective. The same thing goes for essay exams. Nobody is talking about memorizing facts to regurgitate on command. I am talking about tests specifically designed to test a person's knowledge of whatever specific set of knowledge.
Yes. Thus, it is necessary to teach children the skills they will need to know how to think critically, for themselves, later. The current educational system is woefully lacking in this respect. The current system tries to get kids to memorize facts, rather than learn how to dissect new information efficiently. Well, all tests are designed to test a person's knowledge of whatever specific set of knowledge. That's the reason why they are called "tests". Also, you can't have an essay exam that isn't a subjective exam. You give your opinion in an essay. Otherwise, you're looking for a specific answer to a question. In such a case, essays are no longer necessary and can be replaced by multiple-choice, or fill-in-the-blank questions. The point of an essay is not to get a specific answer, but to exam the mental processes, the logic, which the student uses to come up with their opinion and then grade them on that. Think of an essay as running a diagnostic on the student's thinking skills by asking them a question and then watching which way the gears turned to come up with the answer. The answer isn't as important as how the student arrived at it. That's why it's necessary to have subjective portions to tests. The reason why we have both objective and subjective portions of tests is because we also want to test for memorization. Current objective tests are actually quite good at this.
