Texas GOP platform:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Texas A&M University Writing Center:

Critical thinking is, simply put, careful, skeptical, and conscious thinking; it is the sort of thinking, guided by logic and method, that academics value. Critical thinking is also the ability to view any object of study from multiple perspectives, to recognize the cultural, ideological, and cognitive frames (or schemata) we bring to understanding. While the value of critical thinking to scholarship is hardly new, only recently have we understood that critical thinking is in itself a habit and a skill, something which, like the writing process, many of our students may have to learn and practice.
writingcenter.tamu.edu

The Texas GOP is cultivating ignorance.