To add to this: you have to rely on authorities in a sense. I trust that Einstein's theory of General Relativity is true because I trust in the scientific consensus. I trust that the claims made by climate scientists are true because I trust in the peer review process. Now, of course, all of these people can be wrong. But I, as an individual, only have a limited number of years to live and I cannot verify every single of piece of information for myself. Ergo, I have to decide to trust certain authorities, at least partially if I want to do anything useful with my life.
That's true. But you also actually have to learn at least some things that came out of the same official sources and make sure that they do make sense.
That's why I'm saying that the object level is important. Teaching meta is way more difficult.
Also, as I wrote somewhere else, if I look at my Facebook feed for posts of former schoolmates, the ones who had good grades at the time and ended up in higher ed, learning about the world, they don't post fake news and clickbait and horoscopes and don't allow random apps to post in their name etc., while those who used to be struggling and couldn't learn English (as a foreign language) well etc. they do post junk.
Now there are always exceptions, like the university educated engineer who turns to build a perpetuum mobile and cries conspiracy for "getting silenced" etc. But by and large what it comes down to is having a large body of knowledge and understanding about the world. It's not particularly that their "critical thinking" skills are better. They have just read more, learned more, can use foreign language sources, generally have a better model of how the (natural and social) world works, condensed to "intuition". Simply dropping in a "critical thinking" course for kids won't make a significant effect I fear.
