From everything I’ve read, the research is clear. There’s no such thing as “critical thinking” independent of domain specific knowledge. Trying to teach “critical thinking” agnostic of content is basically not possible….

Could not possibly agree more. These days I actually consider “critical thinking” to be a dog whistle for anti-intellectualism. “We don’t just teach literature, we teach critical thinking,” translates to “We don’t teach literature at all, because literature isn’t practical”