A number of recent writers have urged that schools not try to foster critical thinking in students, and this attack on what had lately emerged as very widely held to be a central aim of schooling is examined and found wanting. The debate is placed in the context of the evolving discussion in twentieth‐century philosophy of education of critical thinking as an educational aim, and it is argued that the distinctions and arguments which are needed to rebut the attack on critical thinking can in large measure be found in the literature from Dewey o