"The focus should always be on how to think rather than a list of facts."
That has been the conventional wisdom for a few decades now, but a big problem is that you can't measure things like "critical thinking" in the abstract. Thus the movement towards standardized testing. Nobody says to himself, "we should study lists of facts instead of how to think!" but they do see other nations pulling ahead of the US in standardized tests, and panic. Next thing you know, music and PE classes disappear, end education tends to become rather narrow. And of course, dropping standards does not really transform the *average* classroom into a scene from Dead Poets Society with people standing on the desks and being inspired.