ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to be an easy-to-read introduction to a possible relation between critical thinking (or critical theories, as explained later) and education, based on authors such as Keucheyan, Apple, Au and Gandin, Freire, and Giroux but slightly inclined to language education. We address the history of contemporary critical thinking to discuss its application in education. As Keucheyan anticipates, remaining social transformation is still the main challenge to contemporary critical theories. In times that ask for as wide and as varied retrotopias as possible, particularly in what concerns language education in the Brazilian educational system (see all the debates from recent decades about the use of ‘foreign words’ in Brazilian Portuguese, as well as the approach to linguistic variety of Portuguese Brazilian in textbooks), it seems imperative to discuss critical pedagogy.
