Much is made of the importance of critical thinking in both employment and education. However, up to and including Masters degree level, education might incorporate a limited amount of ‘required’ critical thinking, yet in essence it is still tutor led learning which means there is an expectation that you will not only return a response that is acceptable or not, but also that you will have used a certain path and method of thought to get there. If you do actually think about this particular situation critically, what you will see is that a curriculum is designed and the students are expected to tick all the right boxes which ultimately enables educational establishments to meet their targets both at an internal and external level.

In practice, this means that critical thinking can actually be restrictive within education. An example of this is that, quite recently, I was writing an essay at Masters level and pointed out that to achieve one of the expected answers contract law would have to be broken. I was told to ignore that because I would lose marks as the answer expected was an integral part of the essay. Although my observation was a simple example of critical thinking it would appear it strayed outside of the risk-free zone.

So, if the initial question requires an honest response, perhaps the only way to promote critical thinking is for academia to shift away from tick-box and detailed curriculum based education.

KThompson's answer concludes that critical thinking is awkward for the established curriculum, because unorthodox views would not be acceptable.

However, I am a firm believer that education is better if discovered instead of assimilated by force.

So how can we get the best of both worlds?

Critical thinking can be used to lead to an acceptable, established viewpoint by positing an "incorrect" position and asking students "what's wrong with that?"

For example "It is a well-known fact that slavery is good for mankind's progress. Comments anyone?"

Or "Poverty in the world could be eradicated by giving the poor $50,000 each. Comments?"

Or "Everyone is happier living in a dictatorship."

But how can critical thinking be used when facts must be learned - for example geometry. I don't know how you can critically think your way to Pythagoras. But - the motivation to apply oneself to such learning could be encouraged by asking students to consider, for example "Why would someone want to build a bridge across a river?" And then, having established some reasons, "OK, so how would you go about building the bridge; what would you need to know?" And, as ideas emerge, pick up on them and ask for example "So what will be heaviest thing your bridge will take? How will you know that your design will cope?"

And then eventually "Well, we don't have to work all these things out ourselves, because some very clever people in the past figured out this stuff - wanna see?" And then, as the explanation unfolds, ask "what do you think of that? What might follow from that?"

So for me the idea is that if students think their own way through a topic, much more will "stick".