Because it teaches you how experts think.

If you were sitting in my MYP English classroom and I asked you to compare a poem with an advertisement, or a short story with a film still, you might wonder what any of this has to do with life outside school.

And I’d understand.

At first glance, compare and contrast can feel like one of those “school things”—something teachers ask you to do because it’s in the curriculum. You identify similarities, list differences, write a paragraph, earn a grade, and move on. It’s easy to wonder whether anyone outside an English classroom actually thinks this way.

As a teacher, though, I’m always on the lookout for moments that answer that question. Not because I need to justify the curriculum, but because one of the promises of an IB education is that what we learn in the classroom should help us make better sense of the world beyond it.

Last week, I came across one of those moments.

I was watching an interview with Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, when interviewer Wilfred Frost asked him a question that every MYP English student would immediately recognise.

“Compare and contrast…”

Except this wasn’t about poems or advertisements.

Frost invited Dimon to compare the organisation he joined at American Express in 1982 with the global bank he leads today. More specifically, he wanted to know how Dimon had prevented bureaucracy from taking root in an organisation of more than 320,000 employees.

At first glance, this looks like a question about business leadership.

It isn’t. It’s a question about thinking.

Notice what Frost doesn’t ask: “Is bureaucracy a problem?”

Nor does he ask, “What’s your opinion on leadership?”

Instead, he asks Dimon to compare two moments separated by more than four decades. You can watch the interview here. Hidden inside that request is something far more demanding than simply giving an opinion. To answer well, Dimon has to identify patterns, distinguish meaningful differences from superficial ones and explain why those differences matter.

In other words, he has to think through comparison.

What’s fascinating is that Dimon never gives the kind of comparison many students imagine their English teacher is looking for. He doesn’t produce two neat columns of similarities and differences. In fact, he quickly moves beyond banking altogether.

He talks about restaurants.

Government departments.

Customer call centres.

Tax forms.

On the surface, these examples seem completely unrelated.

But Dimon isn’t comparing organisations because they look alike.

He’s comparing them because he is searching for an underlying principle.

His conclusion is that bureaucracy is rarely the real problem. The real danger is what lies beneath it: complacency, arrogance and leaders who stop listening. Whether you’re running a restaurant, a government office or one of the world’s largest banks, the symptoms may differ. The underlying problem is remarkably similar.

That’s exactly why I wanted to bring this interview to your notice.

When I ask you to compare a poem with an advertisement, or a short story with a film still, I’m not asking you to complete an English exercise.

I’m inviting you to think in the same way.

Not to make a list. Or tick off similarities and differences.

But, to ask a much more interesting question: What larger idea connects these seemingly different texts?

Perhaps both texts explore power. Perhaps both question identity. Perhaps both persuade us in different ways. Perhaps both reveal something about memory, conflict or belonging. The comparison isn’t the destination. It’s the route that leads you to understanding.

This is precisely why the International Baccalaureate places such emphasis on comparing literary and non-literary texts throughout the MYP and later asks Diploma Programme students to build entire comparative arguments between works (paper-2). The goal isn’t simply to identify what is similar or different. It is to cultivate the habit of recognising patterns across contexts, evaluating significance and constructing conceptual understanding.

Jamie Dimon wasn’t comparing two organisations because someone had given him a business-school assignment. He was comparing them because comparison is one of the ways experts think.

Historians compare revolutions.

Scientists compare experimental evidence.

Doctors compare symptoms before reaching a diagnosis.

Journalists compare sources before publishing a story.

Literary critics compare texts to understand how different writers grapple with the same enduring human questions.

They all begin in the same place. By placing two things side by side and asking:

What can I understand by looking at these together that I couldn’t understand by looking at each one in isolation?

So the next time I ask you to compare a poem with an advertisement, don’t think of it as another English task.

Think of it as practice.

Not for the next assessment.

But for becoming the kind of thinker who can move confidently between literature, business, history, science and everyday life – seeing patterns that others might miss and using those patterns to make better judgements about the world.