Is education about knowing or thinking? The real, unnoticed problem in the public schooling culture war

Comment published on New York Times blog, in response to news article, “Florida rejects math textbooks, citing “prohibited” topics,” April 18, 2022:

“Math is about getting the right answer,” says DeSantis, “And we want kids to learn to think so they get the right answer.'

This is only half right: we should want kids to learn to think, but thinking well has little to do with the right answer, and everything to do with the right use of both imagination and reason.  

American education is based on multiple-choice tests and similar 'results-driven' and 'fact-' or 'evidence- based’ ideas of, not thinking, but knowing.  Kids are told what to believe, and then asked to remember it on the test.  Science in this model is reduced to a machine for producing facts, when really it is more a work on how aspects of our world can be thought, conceptualized, modeled.  Instead, we are producing obedient workers whose thinking must be 'right'.  

Our politics fits this too: since the candidates do not usually make rational arguments but only appeals to interest, voting is choosing the commodity you 'like'.    

The alternative is the essay exam.  It is still central in some countries, like France.  A good essay does not have 'the right answer', but an interesting one based on rigorous thinking.    

Education is not just job training but the training of citizens for active participation in the kind of democracy that matters.  That is a democracy that thinks.  Not just getting what you want, or doing what the boss wants; then, as in voting, there is perhaps a right answer, certainly a single one.