It is widely held that, by teaching individuals how to reason through and analyse everyday problems, the teaching of critical thinking develops the deliberative capacities essential to the healthy functioning of democracy. Implicit in this view is the assumption that a certain commensurability exists between the problems presented in such curricula and those that occupy democratic deliberation. In examining one influential critical thinking curriculum, University of Cambridge International Examination's Thinking Skills, however, this article reveals the contingency of the assumption. With its presentation of problems steeped in discourses of logic and argument analysis, and with little consideration of notions of rightness/wrongness, such a curriculum can only tend towards the development of an instrumental form of rationality that, being morally indifferent and emotionally apathetic, contributes instead to the depoliticization of democracy. Given that the nature of democratic deliberation does not only focus on what is correct, but, more crucially, on what is right, it is argued that the problems on critical thinking curricula need to both engage individuals in deliberations over issues of social good, and allow them to think of themselves in ways that fundamentally tie them to other members of society.

In this article, I examine the extent to which, given how critical thinking has been most commonly conceptualised and taught in schools, the subject indeed develops modes of thinking, relating and reasoning that allow individuals to collectively work towards the appreciation and solution of social problems. In the first section, I outline a number of perspectives among social studies researchers and educators that demonstrate the importance of developing critical thinking capacities in students. This is followed by, in the next section, a close examination of two widely popular approaches through which critical thinking is taught À one in the general school curriculum and the other within social studies lessons. I argue that in their current forms and for a number of reasons these understandings of critical thinking fall short of developing the social and relational dimensions of thinking that are more than a little necessary in fulfilling the raison d'être of the subject. Towards this end, the final section presents a social epistemological framework for the teaching of critical thinking in the school curriculum, highlights a number of principles of its application and provides some examples of its use in classrooms.

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