Necessary Combination

I think that critical thinking without critical pedagogy is frequently useless, and critical pedagogy without critical thinking is dangerous.

Critical thinking requires one to critically analyse one's beliefs and ideals, subjecting them to objective logical scrutiny and determining their validity based on set, rational rules.  However, it does not require one to act on one's conclusions.  It is true that if one thinks critically about ethics one might conclude that it is ethical to do what is right and act on one's beliefs, particularly to intervene in unethical behaviour, but that critical thinking does not contain a normative value.  One might reach the above conclusion, but not be appropriately moved to act upon it.  Thus, all of one's critical thinking was useless.

Critical pedagogy requires one to identify injustice in society and work to right it and to teach others to right it.  However, a follower of critical pedagogy might base their assumptions regarding which social groups are being subjected to injustice on unreliable criteria.  The fact that a group is discriminated against does not necessitate that the discrimination is unjust, and groups can be minorities or 'underdogs' for very good reasons.  Thus, a follower of critical pedagogy who was not a critical thinker might end up aiding a group which perpetrated very unethical behaviour.

For this reason, I believe that critical pedagogy and critical thinking must work together in one's life to produce the best results.  The analytical power of critical thinking combined with the impetus of critical pedagogy can lead one to aid society and generally act in an ethical manner.  Alone, neither critical thinking nor critical pedagogy is necessarily sufficient to fulfil this goal.