TOWARDS the end of the final year class that I was observing, the teacher showed the students an advertisement for an internship programme. It offered new graduates three months of exposure to corporate work. Open to applicants from across the country, the internship was full-time, unpaid and free of cost — there was not even an application fee. The role held prestige that could significantly enhance future prospects.

The students were excited at this meritocratic opportunity — open to all regardless of region, religion or ethnicity. “It’s free,” said a student in the middle row, “but it still costs. I’ll need to pay for food, travel and accommodation. I must earn immediately after graduation. It is not for me”. The classroom fell silent.

The student’s last sentence still haunts me. It transformed how everyone in the class saw the ‘free’ internship. What appeared as equal opportunity now seemed conditioned by prior privilege. No-fee-no-pay became a filtering process, favouring those who can absorb risk and forego income. The student’s intuition is backed by research which shows that unpaid internships reinforce social and economic inequality.

The student’s response was an exercise in critical thinking — but not of the kind commonly taught these days in schools and universities or invoked in international agencies’ reports or government policies. There critical thinking is typically understood as the ability to analyse arguments, assess sources, weigh evidence, detect fallacies and check the validity of conclusions. This is how Unesco’s working paper (2015) on the ‘Futures of learning’ defines critical thinking: “accessing, analysing and synthesising information, and can be taught, practised and mastered”. At its best, it enables students to identify what is called fake news and to avoid falling prey to misinformation.

The broader concept of critical thinking is about helping students understand their own and their people’s situations.

These are valuable skills but insufficient; the conception is narrow. They teach only half of what students need. They focus on the internal coherence of texts and reliability of evidence but can leave unexamined questions regarding the interrelationship of self and society and the larger issues of justice, equality, freedom and other human values. This is exactly what the student mentioned above did. She didn’t question the internship’s claims or verify its credentials. She questioned the world that made it inaccessible to her.

This form of critical thinking is closer to another concept related to critical thinking, and is often associated with Critical Social Theory (CST), with its roots in the Frankfurt School. It is a way of looking at the world as already being shaped by power and privilege, resulting in inequities, silencing and exploitation. This observation is not to create despair but to guide the action needed to redress the situation. The theory doesn’t negate the current dominant conception of critical thinking, focused on logical analysis and evidentiary scrutiny; it extends the scope of critique by focusing on the human condition with a critical and transformative lens.

As evidence of its reading of the world, the proponents of CST would point to, among other things, the huge concentration of wealth (the richest one per cent now control 45pc of global resources), which gives disproportionate social and political power to a few. Even the damage done is disproportionate, with the richest 1pc producing more carbon emissions than the poorest 66pc. Continued neocolonial relationships through cultural and economic imperialism, gender inequities, wars and unbridled invasion of technologies without any democratic oversight are some of the other concerns. Critical thinking without probing how the world is constructed is limited at best.

The difference becomes concrete in classrooms. Take, for example, history that is taught through the dominant approach to critical thinking. The aim would be to equip students with skills to verify the sources, check for bias, avoid anachronisms, compare conflicting accounts and construct narratives based on evidence. These skills are indispensable but aren’t enough. With CST, new questions can be asked: whose accounts were preserved and whose were missing? In the sources we have, what happened to the experiences of women, workers and minorities? How are events labelled (mutiny or freedom struggle, for example), and by whom? To answer such questions, students are encouraged to go beyond official and easily available accounts and read narratives of oral histories, diaries and sources in minority languages. The concern is not only veracity but also selection, organisation and framing. It is this type of approach to our knowledge of the past that can move us away from ‘Columbus discovered America’ to what Howard Zinn calls the ‘people’s history of America’.

The distinction can be applied to life as well. For instance, the dominant approach to AI literacy focuses on using it without compromising one’s cognitive skills and following some ethical norms such as declaring its use. The approach and ethics are essentially individualistic — necessary but not sufficient given the nature of technology. A broader CST lens asks about the societal impact of AI in terms of its effect on human labour and relationships; on wealth inequalities; on liberties; on surveillance; on weapons and violence. The critique moves from safeguarding personal well-being to becoming concerned with the common good of today and tomorrow.

A fundamental aim of education is to assist students in formulating their own goals in life. But, goals formed without an understanding of the world we live in are likely to be misguided and dictated by the wishes of others, including those who control what we hear and see. The broader concept of critical thinking is about helping students understand their own and their people’s situations, struggles and privileges. This attitude of looking at society with a critical and transformative lens creates hope for belief in human agency to bring about positive change. The correct diagnosis of the problems is the first step towards a solution. The students who saw the problem with unpaid internships are in a better position to exercise their agency and ask for change. The question is not whether to teach critical thinking, but whether we dare teach its missing half.

The writer is dean of the Institute for Educational Development, Aga Khan University.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2026