Many of those classes do exactly those things. The scholarly criticism exercise uses the subject matter to create "play" exercises to teach students to organiz

Many of those classes do exactly those things. The scholarly criticism exercise uses the subject matter to create "play" exercises to teach students to organize thoughts, construct and analyze arguments, etc. College math classes often do the same thing. For most people, the math is just a medium for the intellectual "play" that teaches critical thinking skills. You probably won't need literary criticism in your day to day life, but then again you probably don't need much of the math either.