In today’s (policy) discourses on education in Flanders (Belgium), talent development is suggested to be the adequate strategy both to offer equal opportunities and to meet the demands of the (knowledge) society and economy in a competitive (European/global) context. We will argue that talent development includes a specific ritual of educational baptism that turns school time into teleological time (of development, production…), organizes the space of schooling as a place of choice or selection, adds a sacred dimension to (school) matter and finally constitutes the pupil as a talented creature (‘not yet, but potentially’). In contrast to this ritual, we elaborate the idea that ‘school’ could be considered to be precisely the name for a unique act of profanation, that constitutes ‘free time’ (scholé), shapes ‘play grounds’ (ludus), exposes the ‘thing-ness’ of matter (quodlibet) and makes possible the experience of ‘infancy’ (infantia), that is the experience of potentiality. The following thesis is developed: the experience of ‘school’ is the experience of potentiality. And a less modest thesis: the experience of ‘school’ is exactly the unthought of the mature history and philosophy of education, and of history and philosophy in general.