The comparative analysis of the national curricula highlights a concentration of the problem solving activities in the Mathematics and Natural Sciences curricular area, most of them involving calculation, while the humanistic disciplines propose rather information selection and logical processing activities, or reasoning activities. As a consequence, it appears a breach in the problem solving competence, at the curricular areas level, and also between problem solving within different school disciplines and problem solving within everyday life. It is necessary to have a common, integrative vision on problem solving, which contains interdisciplinary areas, as well as the aspects outside school environment. Problem solving doesn’t have to be seen only as an adaptive instrument, or as a “best practice”, but also as a way which conducts the students to a better motivation for study, to a higher satisfaction given by the identification of the most elegant solutions, and to an improved self-confidence. This article intends to underline the integrative potential of this transversal competence – problem solving -, and to present some examples from the Romanian national curricula.