Major areas of inquiry found in this paper pertain to: (1) the current status of critical thinking in curriculums; (2) critical thinking as working with knowledge that is open to question and creative response; (3) descriptions of situations where critical thinking is enacted through classroom discourse techniques; (4) the need to wean students from roles as passive notetakers ("little stenographers"); and (5) descriptions of cooperating teachers as critical inquiry mentors of student teachers. The power of authentic discourse in classrooms is centrally advanced with reference to the practice of "suppositional teaching." Through such teaching, knowledge can be viewed as belonging to participants in group dialogue instead of to sources of established or taken-for-granted authoritativeness. The paper concludes with an invitation to consider why critical thinking in clasrooms is still in very much of an "at-risk condition." Specific and unfortunate conditions that still prevent critical thinking efforts in classrooms are suggested. It is suggested that good cheer about critical thinking advances in recent years may be delusional. (Author/IAH)