«If you were told you had half an hour left, how would you spend your last minutes?» A physics teacher asked his graduating students this question. One answer stood out: he would spend it in school, «because one minute in school feels like a year, and in this case, I would live almost an eternity.»
Starting from this answer, Dr Mahdi Mansour argues that many classrooms still close questions with fixed answers, reward memorisation and repetition, and prepare students for the past rather than the future — a betrayal of the hidden potential of a whole generation. The essay makes the case for schools that keep questions open, value creativity, and treat every student as a potential poet.
Read the full essay on Medium: Potential Poets But Systematic Schools (July 2024).
