Restructured schools should be centers of inquiry and reflection, not of unexamined tradition; curriculum and instruction courses in teacher education programs should facilitate critical inquiry and reflection. A graduate level curriculum models course at the Wichita (Kansas) State University was restructured around the basic tenet of critical inquiry and reflection, based on John Smyth's model for developing and sustaining critical reflection in teacher education. Several teachers' stories are told in vignette form as evidence of the power of reflective thought to aid educators in confronting hidden curriculum issues. The personal experiences of students whose environments included such hazards as destructive relationships, climates of futility, learned irresponsibility, and loss of purpose are explored, along with the efforts made by teachers to reclaim these students or the lack of effort and its tragic results. The teachers in the university course felt that they gained the power to reclaim individual student lives that are being snuffed out by bureaucracy, indifference, naivete, and institutionalized inequality implicit in the hidden curriculum. (Contains 14 references.) (JDD)