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Several decades after the abolishment of the formal slave trade, the administrative colonisation of Africa by Europe, and the adoption of progressive international human rights laws for equality, there is no doubt that pro-social justice education is facing a massive backlash from the far right globally. As critical diversity studies teaching and learning practitioners and facilitators, we address how the normative order seeks to legitimise anti-social justice discourses using invalidated assumptions, including the myth that critical theoretical education employs indoctrination. We show how our work is about making visible the baseless and groundless nature of arguments made by the far right in their dismissal of critical theory (CT). Using experiences from teaching and learning in the Theories of Diversity, Otherness & Difference postgraduate course at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies (WiCDS), we show how CT is a pivotal pedagogical banister for the 21st century. A banister is a support structure along the rails of a staircase. CT in critical diversity studies (CDS) incorporates anti-foundational thinking, which assumes no fixed theoretical resting place as this simplifies the complexity of diversity issues. Overall, this article concludes that far from being a form of ‘indoctrination’, as is argued by the far right, CT is a useful pedagogical banister for our existence in the 21st century.

The aim of this paper is to show critical thinking as an important element of cur- riculum that is worth developing during various courses in the process education and to which the form and content of philosophy course is worth adjusting. The article points out various difficulties of putting the idea into practice, particularly those connected to assumptions and practices of the Polish education system (po- liticization, idelogization, lack of pluralism in the Polish school, and little prepara- tion of teachers to develop critical thinking in their pupils). The paper also gives examples of solutions that aid skeptical thinking teaching. I do not argue that the school should resign from passing cultural competences and knowledge regarding history of culture and philosophy, but I do suggest that they do not have to the most crucial position in curriculum. Nevertheless, education should not be confined to only critical thinking as it would both restrain creative thinking and upset the balance between processes of individualization and socialization, the latter being essential on early stages of education.

The article suggests the need for education, which is free of indoctrination and imposition of authority. Changes that occurred in the Polish educational system during last twenty five years created a subtle form of indoctrination. In such situation an ethical education becomes especially necessary to develop in pupils critical thinking and shape the humanistic attitude.