Maybe his education was strong but vertical, and thus inadequate, leaving him susceptible to irrationality? At my university, the arts and sciences school had

Maybe his education was strong but vertical, and thus inadequate, leaving him susceptible to irrationality? At my university, the arts and sciences school had broad requirements: math, chemistry or physics, a language, history, humanities, and also a critical thinking requirement that could be fullfilled by specific classes: philosophy, logic/heuristics, political science, etc. Intro classes never qualified for the critical thinking requirement. Most of my friends were in the engineering school and got none of this. They could took only engineering related classes, they had no history or language requirement possibly not even an offering. All of them hated the single "non-engineering" class they had to take: writing. That was apparently as critical thinking as it got.