Monday, May 25, 2026, 10:34 a.m
2549 readings
There is a hypocrisy in Romanian society that is almost impossible to ignore: everyone talks about education, almost no one is willing to really “defend” it. The parties maintain themselves in the area of educational necrophagy, an area that suits them perfectly. Even the gravediggers of education have the greatest aplomb in dissecting education: the irrelevant in the educational system, transformed by political intervention into “educational geniuses”, the poly-tricks practiced in the sinecure area, the insipid grabbers from the “appropriate” sphere of influence, etc.
Politicians invoke education in the electoral register, teachers claim it as a trade union, parents emotionally instrumentalize it, and institutions turn it into a rigid bureaucratic exercise lacking substance. Meanwhile, the student—the one we pretend is the discussion—remains trapped in a system that has lost direction and sometimes even meaning.
“Reform” was promised for years. Ministers, laws, methodologies, manuals, names and slogans have changed. Funds were spent mercilessly (for the benefit of the “scavengers” we were talking about earlier). Pompous strategies and sterile conferences have been produced, but the essential discussion has been systematically avoided: who is responsible for the state in which education has reached, and how will they be held accountable? Romanian crimes have no culprits. Educational truths are inconvenient. For native education, the truths seem almost blasphemous: you, a poor teacher or parent, do not disturb the minister, do not upset the inspector, do not disturb the director’s comfort. Don’t disturb the party feng shui, you simple man.
By the way, Romanian education was not destroyed in a single day, nor by a single social category. It eroded slowly and predictably, through complicity, abandonment and convenient silence. I did not fight educational cavities; we ourselves “shaken” them over the foundation of the frail edifice.
It would be time to openly admit: Romanian education is going through an unprecedented decline of moral authority. There is basically an overlapping triple crisis that no one is talking about objectively: families unprepared to form values, characters and discipline, a professionally and morally vulnerable educational system, and a state that treats education superficially. You can see with the naked eye, many children grow up without boundaries, without discipline and without solid benchmarks, in a culture that confuses freedom with the absence of responsibility. Moreover, responsibility is often considered incapacity to adapt… How did it get here?
As I have been signaling for years, a substantial part of the education system seems professionally and emotionally exhausted, unable to inspire genuine respect or intellectual vocation. However, the most harmful role in the story is played by the state: it looks at education exclusively through the lens of electoral interest, without real long-term reconstruction projects. The Romanian state, in an assumed and cynical way, deprives entire generations of children of a quality education. But this topic is never on the public agenda, a place where small topics, of an irrelevance sister to the absurd, populate. In the world of lack of substance and autochthonous appearances, the school began to resemble more and more an institution of social transit: students pass through it, teachers survive in it, politicians take advantage of it. The fundamental questions are almost completely missing: what kind of people do we want to form? What values do we still defend? What does an educated man mean today?
Perhaps the worst problem is another: we have become accustomed to lowering standards and degradation. We began to consider as normal what should have revolted us. Verbal violence became sincerity, vulgarity became authenticity. The lack of value and reference systems has become a human “quality”. Ironically, rudeness has replaced good manners. In such a social culture, contemporary education is conducted in total dissonance with everyday reality where “moral jamming” transforms deficiencies into virtues.
The way forward, from a personal perspective, is clear: education cannot be saved by slogans, it can only be saved when society itself decides that it is worth defending. Our children need to know that an educated man does not raise his voice, does not humiliate, does not threaten and does not turn aggression into a form of personal affirmation. They need to understand that true education is not just grades, degrees or academic performance, it is lucidity, character, poise and the ability to remain “human” in an increasingly dehumanized world.
The world has changed. The Romanian school still pretends not to notice.
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