Recall that around 20% only reach a Hauptschulabschluss (or the equivalent in their state), where critical reading takes a back seat to just reading. A few percent don't finish secondary education at all.

Here[1] for example are the learning goals for Berlin. Assessing the quality of an informational text and weighing the arguments is skill level G and H (page 27). This is explicitly not a goal for these students.

[1] https://bildungsserver.berlin-brandenburg.de/fileadmin/bbb/u...

Critical reading in the german curriculum is far from unbiased in the selection of topics: Should we have the death penalty? Of course not, arguing otherwise will get you a bad grade. What about the yellow-press? Universally bad of course, Katharina Blum is required reading. Religion? All are nice and equally fine, criticizing religion is a nono and "fear of god" is an aim of all education mandated by the constitution. So please read Nathan der Weise critically and regurgitate what the official comment says. Do we need a military? Of course not, why would you want to invade Poland again? Workers rights? Good and well, but compromise is necessary for the good of the economy and society. Except in the case of teachers, as state officials they always get a bad deal supposedly...

I've come to see "critical reading" to be just a furtherance of the teachers' and the states' biases and aims by means of a more sophisticated cloak. You are supposed to be able to fake a little critical thinking, but arrive at the predetermined conclusions. Don't rock the boat, stay inside the lines, but do this little hand-wringing ritual so you don't seem like an unsophisticated sheep.

It would seem that you had a) not the best teachers and b) didn't get it. I had a very left-leaning liberal history and civics teacher, he never argued against the existence of a German military. I was in school when crosses were tossed out of classrooms, that was never a real question, besides a couple of catholic religion teachers.

And why wouldn't all religions be treated equal in a country that guarantees religious freedom? Quite an important lesson to learn, if you ask me. Death penalty? Abolished in Germany, so I don't get your point of arguing for it. That being said, you can. If the arguements are good, it shouldn't impact your grades. If it does, well, grades in German (literature) are highly subjective as well. And try arguing against Catholic dgma in Catholc religion class. Religion calsses are, by the way, mandatory in all (most?) German states, and the church has huge sa in who teaches it.

I'm not sure if I didn't get it or I got it all too well... If you want to educate pupils to be critical, then of course they need to be critical not only in a curriculum-intended classroom setting. They need to be critical in all parts of life, or you've failed in what you wanted to teach them. This also means arguing against catholic dogma in catholic religion class. Every point of view needs to be defended, even the point of view that the teacher and curriculum promotes. Arguing otherwise means that you teach pupils to only be critical on a few select subjects that are politically acceptable to be critical about, like the usual tropes of "human rights in china" or "death penalty in the US". Then you are just teaching the faking of critical thinking and reading, not the actual thing.

Bavaria re-introduced crosses in classrooms several years ago, with very shady arguments.

> "And why wouldn't all religions be treated equal in a country that guarantees religious freedom?" and "Religion calsses are, by the way, mandatory in all (most?) German states, and the church has huge sa in who teaches it."

The notion of religious freedom that you promote and that schools promote explicitly excludes freedom from religion, i.e. Atheism or Agnosticism. Just like forced religious education (couldn't pick ethics as an alternative for lack of teachers, and as soon as ethics was available, noticed that the religion curriculum is literally "dancing and singing" while ethics is hardcore philosophy to keep pupils away from the subject and from any kind of acceptable grades).

Oh, and that the death penalty was abolished is beside the point. If you pick "death penalty" as a subject of discussion, then of course it must be an equally valid outcome of the discussion to be pro death penalty, if the arguments provided weigh more heavily. Changing policy isn't the intent here. Learning to discuss such matters critically is. Which doesn't work if the outcome is predetermined and you will be punished with bad marks for arriving at the "wrong" conclusion.

Ethics is a very common alternative, even bavarian countryside schools (source: a friend of ours is teaching English and religion at such a school), upt to the point where they have to mix classes for catholic religion. And ethics is covering much more than just religion (source: bith my childern are in ethics class).

Regarding your last argument, following that logic would include argueing genocide as a solution as well. Which you obviously cannot. There is no way why China's human righs abuses should be tolerated or supported. Tolerated to the degree geopolitical realities dictate, sure. Learning why realities are what they are and why China is doing what they do, of course. Finding arguments supporting their actions for the sake of the argument and "critical thinking" excersise, no way. Same goes for the death penalty.

Well, but in that case the curriculum is even more screwed up because they picked exercise topics (and death penalty is the classic) that according to your arguments are totally unsuitable. You are arguing to limit critical thinking to the cute "bunnies or butterflies" topics. I would argue that critical thinking is necessary, especially in topics that "hurt". One may leave genocide or cannibalism to the advanced classes, but if a topic isn't the least bit controversial, I would say it is impossible to learn critical thinking.

Lots of people historically considered genocide a solution (and lots still do). So it is very very far from "obvious". If you dismiss such arguments out of hand instead of showing why the strongest versions of them are flawed you will never convince anybody who is not on your side already.

Maybe you just were unlucky with your teachers. I got very good grades multiple times despite disagreeing with my teacher.