Critical Thinking and its importance:

Critical thinking: to be able to look at one's own ideas and place them in the teeth of scrutiny is essential to progression of thought and ideas. Self evaluation and the ability to make new ideas is the end product in a process that goes to the heart of what learning is.

Students don't necessarily have to apply critical thinking in the order of bloom's taxonomy. The higher one goes in this layered system, the higher the thinking and the more critical it will become. Rote memorization has proved to be somewhat useless. Summarization is more important, mainly it focuses upon retention rather than parroting. Making summarization student-directed is also the best way to improve learning. Students will have to 'teach' their ideas. Teaching is the best way to learn something.