We live surrounded by words—spoken with confidence, written with authority, and shared at astonishing speed. Yet behind many of them lie confusion, prejudice, and unexamined assumptions. From everyday conversations to public decisions, gaps in reasoning and expression reveal something deeper than mere slips of the tongue: they expose deficiencies in education. In such a climate, critical thinking is no luxury. It is a necessity.
A famous footballer tells the press, “We are proud of our sporting achievement.”
An older gentleman offers his seat at a desk to a colleague, who replies, “Thank you, don’t trouble yourself.”
An admirer confides in the woman he admires, “I’ve figured out what your problem is: you’re romantic and you want exclusivity.”
One colleague tries to explain to another the difficulties she encountered in solving a problem, and the other responds, “There’s no need to justify yourself.”
A teacher is advised to check whether the bio-therapist she intends to consult might be a charlatan. She answers, “I’m too desperate to check anymore.”
Two people discuss the benefits of prayer: one appeals to the Bible, the other disagrees, but without offering arguments, instead invoking a vague authority based on information acquired at a course in… “sacrotherapy.” In the end, she says, “Don’t be upset, but I can’t explain it to you, because I paid a lot of money to learn this.”
A young man is asked to present an argument in favor of creation as described in the biblical book of Genesis. He replies that “one argument would be comfort,” meaning that supporters of creationism find comfort in holding their views.
A finance minister justifies a decision to cut social security contributions by five percentage points… “from the bottom of my heart.”
At a seminar on a theoretical topic, one student is challenged with solid arguments by another, who happens to suffer from tuberculosis. The first student’s final response to the counterargument is, “Serves me right for arguing with someone consumptive!”
A waiter informs customers that it is closing time with the announcement, “Please stop drinking, we’re closing.”
A building manager warns residents to avoid a freshly cemented area of the stairwell with a simple shout: “Hey!”
At a master’s program admission interview, a candidate answers the committee’s questions by saying, “Rather than talking nonsense, I’d better admit that I don’t know.”
A doctoral student at a university abroad runs into his former professor and mentor from a university in Bucharest. Because the professor is older, he takes his leave with the words, “As for you—what else could I wish you but good health?”
If the shortcomings in thinking, expression, and conduct illustrated by these examples are apparent to you, then you will likely accept that they point to gaps in education. Of course, not everyone can possess highly developed skills of logical reasoning and abstract thinking. But at the very least, more careful use of language, shedding prejudices and harmful social habits, and a clearer understanding of the meanings of the terms we use are all attainable. These alone would spare us many misunderstandings, offenses, and conflicts.
Practical difficulties
Literacy involves reading and writing skills, but not merely at the level of recognizing letters and linking words—a limitation that defines functional illiteracy. This category includes children, young people, and even adults who once learned to read and write at school or at home but did not continue to practice these skills. As a result, they are unable to understand a text, interpret information independently, or produce their own texts involving abstract notions. As I personally observed five years ago during an anthropological field study in a village in Argeș County, some sixth-grade students were unable even to follow the subtitles of foreign-language films they were watching.
Critical thinking
Under conditions of poor literacy, higher demands for abstract reasoning and critical thinking cannot realistically be met. Let us assume that a young person learns foreign languages and acquires skills in using computers and the internet. If that person remains functionally illiterate, this will prevent them from passing the exams required by various higher education institutions, or even by some high schools. It is of little use to speak Spanish or English fluently if you cannot “decode” a complex text in those languages or produce one yourself; in such cases, theoretical-level communication is impossible. It is equally pointless to handle a tablet with ease if it has been used only for games and social media, while you are unable to produce an original paper on a specialized topic or to think conceptually.
Even when young people, adults, or seniors do have an adequate level of literacy, certain issues persist that are, ultimately, the result of weaknesses in our education system. They are evident everywhere: in everyday communication, in social interactions, at work, in neighborhoods, in the media, and within institutions and organizations. Sometimes terminology is used inaccurately, leading to misunderstandings; sometimes arguments are flawed, producing illogical responses; sometimes abstract reasoning is absent, resulting in irrational decisions; and sometimes moral education or basic civility is lacking, giving rise to crude dialogue, inappropriate expressions, or offensive language. All of these factors undermine both our communication and our collective activity.
What is to be done?
First and foremost, there is a need to introduce critical thinking classes in schools, as well as to promote courses and training programs for adults, tailored to their social and professional needs, within lifelong learning frameworks. At present, critical thinking courses are found mainly at the university and postgraduate level, in only a small number of humanities faculties, and are largely rooted in an Anglo-Saxon pedagogical model.
These initiatives appear in a context in which European education and research bodies encourage the mobility of students, teachers, and researchers.[1] The Erasmus+ European program, launched in 2014, promotes exchanges between European universities and institutions on other continents. The minimum requirements are proficiency in widely used languages and digital learning skills, while higher-level requirements include critical thinking and abstract reasoning. These competencies are specified in most European selection tests, whether for admission to universities abroad or for employment in various fields.[2]
The nature of critical thinking
Broadly speaking, critical thinking involves close attention to the way we think—both individually and in dialogue with others. Through its theoretical tools, it enables us to identify prejudices, harmful mindsets underlying certain opinions, implicit or even unconscious assumptions, logical fallacies, and the misuse of words and expressions. It also allows us to eliminate these “impurities” of thought and communication that disrupt our decisions and actions, our interactions with others, self-knowledge, professional activity, emotional relationships, and our behavior within groups, couples, families, and society at large.
Here is how two American academics describe critical thinking: “Critical thinking is the careful, deliberate determination of whether we should accept, reject or suspend judgment about a claim and of the degree of confidence with which we accept or reject it. The ability to think critically is vitally important, in fact, our lives depend on it. The way we conduct our lives depends on what we believe to be true—on what claims we accept. The more carefully we evaluate a claim and the more fully we separate issues that are relevant to it from those that are not, the more critical is our thinking. We do not do our critical thinking in a vacuum, of course. When we are confronted with a claim, usually we already have a certain amount of information relevant to the topic, and we can generally figure out where to find more if we need it. Having both the desire and the ability to bring such information to bear on our decisions is part of the critical-thinking process. Critical thinking involves a lot of skills, including the abilities to listen and read carefully, to evaluate arguments, to look for and find hidden assumptions, and to trace the consequences of a claim.”[3]
Benefits
In this way, both our capacity for reasoning and our ability for self-education can be put to good use. Implicitly, we also come to embrace values that help regulate our behavior. The desired outcomes include a better understanding of and interaction with those around us, as well as with ourselves, improved adaptation to a civilized community, social, and cultural environment, and the improvement of existing deficiencies.
The main practical benefit of critical thinking is that it helps us recognize that some problems are either poorly formulated or poorly understood, and therefore remain unsolved. As one management specialist has noted, “The most common source of mistakes in management decisions is the emphasis on finding the right answer rather than the right question.”[4] We are often misled by hidden, unspoken assumptions—our own or those of our interlocutors—which, if not identified, lead us away from a solution. A simple logic puzzle illustrates this: two people want to cross a river and can do so only using a boat that can carry just one person at a time. How can both of them cross? The unspoken assumption that blocks the solution is that both people are on the same bank, although the problem statement never says this.
The advantages of practicing critical thinking from an early age can be readily observed by educators and parents, precisely because it also involves character formation. Children and adolescents are shaped by values such as mutual understanding, cooperation, dialogue, and reasonable argumentation; respect for differing opinions; and the willingness to assume good faith on the part of those with whom they debate. This is how a kindergarten teacher in Bucharest explains what “thinking critically” means at preschool level: “It means forming one’s own judgments, accepting the views of others, being able to look responsibly at one’s own mistakes and correct them, accepting help from others and offering it to those who need it. The ability to think critically is acquired over time, allowing children to express themselves spontaneously and freely whenever there is a learning situation, without fear of others’ reactions or opinions, and giving them the confidence and strength to analyze and reflect.”[5]
Another significant, and by no means negligible, benefit of developing critical thinking is that it makes us more receptive to the deliberate or unintended humor of those around us and helps us cultivate our own sense of humor. It is a privilege to recognize and appreciate a well-crafted joke or subtle self-irony, and also to distinguish them from mere blunders or absurdities. One example is the famous reflection by Ion Creangă, which deliberately defies logic: “As poor as I’ve been this year, last year, and as long as I’ve lived, I’ve never been.” Or we may enjoy self-irony such as: “Always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise they won’t go to yours.”[6] By contrast, we can detect the lack of coherence in a public statement made by a local VIP, ostensibly concerned with the younger generations: “I read The Manual of the Warrior of the Light with two markers. I underlined in yellow the passages I liked and where I identified with the hero of the book, and in green the ones I didn’t like and didn’t read.”[7]
There is little doubt that, in the future, the pace at which our social relationships of all kinds and at every level of complexity improve will depend on how quickly the tools of critical thinking are put into practice. They are necessary in school and family education, in self-education and lifelong learning, as well as in decision-making based on rational deliberation. Ideally, critical thinking should also be part of the criteria used to promote or select candidates for positions of responsibility in society. One can only hope that we will not be slow to recognize this need, which ultimately fulfills us as beings endowed with reason. We exist as rational beings only if we actually use our reason.
