Why should students learn to be critical?

Critical thinking in education is meant to help students connect what they learn to their own lived experiences and the world around them. It is not about being cynical or fault-finding, nor about maintaining the status quo. Critical pedagogy, as advocated in NCF 2005, encourages learners to question, reflect, and relate issues to their own lives so that learning becomes meaningful. Appreciating uniform or homogeneous perspectives is actually the opposite of critical thinking, which values diversity of viewpoints. Hence option (3) is correct.