Critical Thinking in the Contemporary Education: A Historical Approach

Abstract

The aim of the present text is to analyze the place held by critical thinking in the current education system, showing at the same time the changes of perspective that have taken place during the last decades in the manner this discipline is being approached.  Critical thinking has bben focusing for decades on logical and informal argumentation, but nowadays it also approaches subjects as psycho-cognitive biases, skills in evaluating numbers and having the sense of proportions, the use of language, understanding of the world, having interdisciplinary knowledge, moral, legal and aesthetic reasoning. We may notice lately that the authors who theoreticize critical thinking go back to antique logic and to the Greek philosophy of education, with the purpose to draw connections between them.

Keywords: critical thinking, education, applied logic, Plato, Aristotle, educational subjects