Students at local school memorize lesson in independent thinking

A teacher in a local school district in the capital was recognized Tuesday after his students successfully memorized an entire chapter on independent and critical thought, including page numbers, the book author’s name and the publishing house’s address.

Schoolteacher Nadim al-Bezr said he launched the new class after realizing that the students were forced to learn by heart many aspects of their curriculum, such as Arabic poetry, Quranic interpretation, multiplication tables, and other subjects that don’t require a lot of thinking.

“I wanted to teach them to rely on themselves instead of having them simply memorize these readymade intellectual templates, so I crafted an entire curriculum for them so they can learn it word-for-word and not live their lives simply parroting the thoughts of others,” al-Bezr said during a ceremony celebrating innovation in education.

Al-Bezr said he relied on a variety of incentives to ensure the students memorized the lessons, including surprise quizzes to test their familiarity with both form and content of the syllabus and class summaries that he had prepared for them.

“My goal at the end of the day is to prepare a new generation for life’s challenges who know the one and only way to think independently without needing me to tell them every time how to do it,” he added.