How can critical thinking be promoted in education?

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.