system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: The power of magic has caused people born into the wizarding world in Harry Potter to lack critical thinking and problem solving skills.

The ability to use magic in the Harry Potter universe has allowed for creative solutions to a lot of problems that people face. However, I believe that using magic to solve problems has caused people born into the wizarding world to be unable to think through basic problems well themselves. Instead, solving a problem is just knowing the name and wand movement of a spell that will take care of things. This reliance has bled into how people navigate all situations that don't have an obvious or magical solution.

I've been going back through the entire plot, mostly by listening to the podcast Mostly Nitpicking do a full movie series run, and have noticed how a lot of characters lack what people typically consider common sense in a lot of situations. The character who does seem to know everything in every situation is one who was born and raised entirely isolated from magic, Hermione. I think a lot of what makes her studious nature so unique is that she actually wants to understand things and how to deal with unexpected circumstances while people born into magic aren't worried about figuring things out for themselves.

A real life analogy to this could be comparing a student who came from a privileged background and had others, like their parents, do things for them versus a student who didn't have this luxury and needed to do more for themselves. A student who never needed to do things on their own typically struggles more with critical thinking than their peers because they're used to having other people do that for them. In Harry Potter, those born into magic face a similar problem as a result of magic replacing the need to do many things themselves.

This seems to be most apparent with the three main characters. Ron, the only character who has relied on magic to accomplish basic tasks for his entire life, is shown to be less independent in his thinking, to have less initiative, and to look like an absolute dunce when a solution isn't obvious. Meanwhile, Harry and Hermione take initiative for themselves much more frequently and are able to reach solutions themselves. This is a small sample size admittedly, and I'm using it more as an example than as proof. 

I can see how the ability to use magic to help with things can foster more creative thinking and promote problem solving skills, but I don't think that plays out in the people in the universe. Instead, magic is hamstringing most witches' and wizards' ability to think effectively for themselves.
gpt
Keep in mind, the books were told from the perspective of Harry Potter.

Harry Potter learned through rote memorization, mostly, but there were underlying principles to magic that he did not understand.

This is alluded to in several places in the books.  Harry excelled in potions class using notes written in margins, written by someone who clearly understood why the potions worked enough to be able to modify them. 

Professor Slughorn asked the students to customize a antidote based on the principles of potions, and Harry had no idea how to do it, but he got around it by grabbing a bezoar stone.

Hermione explains that one can not produce food out of thin air because it is one of five exceptions to Gamp's law of elemental transfiguration.  What that means, Hermione obviously knows, but Harry clearly does not.

Magic only seemed to be rote memorization, rather than derived from underlying fundamental principles, because the main perspective of the story was ignorant of those principles (which conveniently prevented Rowling from having to come up with and explain to readers hard magic rules).