Why Learn Poetry in Today’s World?

Walk into most schools today and you’ll hear a familiar refrain: focus on STEM. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are seen as the engines of future prosperity. Parents push for coding camps, policymakers talk of skill gaps, and students are told that poetry — if it appears at all — is an indulgence.

I say this as an engineer by education, and as someone who has spent years working on the pedagogy of science and mathematics. I have built my career on the conviction that scientific literacy matters deeply. And yet, I keep returning to the question: what gets lost when we sideline poetry?

There’s a scene in Dead Poets Society where Robin Williams, playing the teacher John Keating, tells his students: “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.” It’s a moment that still resonates because it names what poetry does best — it speaks to our shared humanity.

Poetry doesn’t train us for specific jobs. It trains us to notice, to imagine, to feel. In a world dominated by algorithms, data, and automation, those capacities matter more than ever. Machines can analyze, but they cannot make meaning. They can calculate, but they cannot console. The human ability to wrestle with ambiguity, to express the inexpressible, and to find beauty in complexity is precisely what poetry cultivates.

This isn’t a nostalgic argument for a lost art. It’s a pragmatic one. Leaders who cannot imagine cannot lead. Citizens who cannot empathize cannot build just societies. People who cannot articulate what they see and feel will be at the mercy of those who can. Poetry teaches us to pause, to listen, to reach for language that enlarges our world rather than shrinks it.

So yes, STEM prepares us for a future of rapid change. But poetry prepares us for the parts of that future that matter most: how we make sense of it, how we connect with each other, how we remain human in the storm.