"...learning is an active process of conjecture and criticism rather than passive absorption."
Yes and no. As you likely know, there is a right way and a wrong way, usually more than one of both, to do things. When someone isn't available to show you the right way, like Anne Lowe was to show me how to field dress a deer in <3 minutes, then you definitely need the ability to figure out how to do it. However, we can muddle through and manage to achieve something despite not doing so in the most efficient or productive way, and if we never learn the right ways to do things, we can stick to doing them poorly all our lives. Forcing such a fate on our kids is terrible to contemplate, so we should avail them of specific knowledge they can measure by their abilities to reason and compare to other means, making sure to enable them to maintain open minds so that they can become right when they discover they have been wrong.
I homeschooled my kids who are highly regarded professionals in fields they have chosen and taught themselves to excel in because I provided them a practical education in how to build, repair, and maintain structures, as well as field work in biology, and self-guided IT and networking by assembling and maintaining a home network, amongst other things. The thing I consider my greatest achievement is enabling them to gamify any and every task. I showed them how to enjoy doing the dishes one day when they had spent three hours miserably malingering at it. I told them to step back and watch while I did their chore for them, which they haply did.
I pointed out, as I busily tackled the job, that they had spent hours in misery and getting nothing done at all, ensuring they'd spend the maximum time possible on the task they least wanted to spend any time at. Then I asked them if they treated things they really enjoyed, like videogames, that way, dawdling, bitching, and complaining about taking out the level bosses, collecting loots, gaining perks and items, dragging everything out as long as possible, trying to avoid getting any quest done, and etc. They laughed.
As I finished wiping down the counters, I pointed out that the dishes were all done and the whole kitchen was clean from top to bottom, that I'd be well pleased by such a well done job (and I always rewarded them for going above and beyond minimum requirements), and if they'd have tackled it like I had, they'd have been playing video games hours ago. Then I pointed out that any job you challenge yourself to do as well and quickly as possible is just like a video game, invokes the same mental circuits, and even better, improves the skill with which they would apply their physical and mental capabilities, which would reward them all their lives in every challenge they faced, including goals they chose and wanted to achieve very much for themselves.
I never saw them so dawdling and malingering that way again.
TCS sounds great, like sustainable development. But there are rhetorical devices that throw buzzwords around and seek to fool people into enabling overlords to maximize profits from farming them, and actual sustainable agriculture, construction, and civic planning that is real sustainable development. Our kids, like all living creatures, are designed to acquire the necessary skills and abilities to adult, to prosper, and reproduce. They are literal sponges for a variety of skills and realizations that are critical to being the kind of people they want very much to be. When you approach curricula from that perspective of a parent seeking to maximize the evolutionary success of offspring, you can provide education that kids will savor, enjoy, and maximally benefit from.
Attending to their interests can enable you to realize what really matters, because nothing so educates someone as teaching others. When my kids showed interest by asking questions about things like astronomy, native Americans, and so forth, I considered those things to have triggered their evolutionary imperative to acquire skills and competence to be the men they wanted to be, so I taught them how to learn what they wanted to know, because I could die at any minute and they needed to have that competence all their lives. I required them to write reports on such matters, but never more than a page, because communicating in writing is critically important in civil society, and brevity is the soul of wit. The more concisely one can communicate in writing, the more effectively one can reach their readers.
I am an expert in homeschooling, because of all the things I have ever set out to do in life, raising my sons I have best succeeded at. I hope these thoughts enable you to far exceed my achievements as a father. However, I suspect you know you will fall short of your desired level of achievement every single day you parent, and you will regret failing to achieve such levels for the rest of your life, as all parents always have and always will. The persons our children are form in the womb. Their character and talents are genetic. If we manage to feed, clothe, and shelter our kids until they are competent to provide for themselves, they will take it from there and we will have succeeded to reproduce successfully, which is the real standard we must meet. If we manage to inspire them, to enable them to find joy in their lives, and provide them the tools to gain what knowledge and skill is necessary to achieve their goals that they decide they want to achieve, that is the ultimate peak of parental achievement.
That requires knowing who our kids are, because we can't make them into people they weren't born. We can only enable those people they are to be as competent to attain to their definition of joy and peace as is possible to who they are.
Aim for that, rather than specific knowledge, skill levels you think are important, or what you think will earn the most money. You are not them. Money isn't wealth. You can buy some kinds of wealth with money, but money will never be edible, will never burp half digested milk down the back of your neck and bring you that joy that is real wealth.
Good luck, but better wisdom.