In this article, I critique a component of the highly structured Open Court Reading curriculum designed to teach elementary children "inquiry and higher-order thinking" skills. The intended outcome of this component is, I argue, the production of critically literate and informed consumers of information. However, both the critical thinking skills the inquiry process purports to engender and the potential for critical literacy development it advertises are lost in the standardized, step-by-step implementation characteristic of the entire language arts curriculum itself. The article ends with implications and descriptions of promising alternatives that promote both critical thinking skills and critical literacy practices. (Contains 4 notes.)