A thought-provoking article called "Good Teachers Give Knowledge; Great Teachers Create Curiosity" raises a question Malaysia's education system can no longer afford to ignore: Are our schools producing students who know the answers, or students who know how to ask better questions?
The answer could decide whether our education system prepares young people for the age of artificial intelligence.
The ideal classroom described in the article is not one where the teacher simply hands out information and students memorise it for exams. It is a classroom where children are encouraged to ask "Why?" and "What if?", dig into problems, challenge assumptions, connect lessons to real life, and leave wanting to discover more.
Interestingly, this philosophy is nothing new to Malaysia.
The Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013–2025 clearly pushed for Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS), student-centred learning, inquiry-based learning, problem-solving and project-based learning. The Ministry's framework stressed that students should move beyond memorising facts towards applying, analysing, evaluating and creating.
So the problem isn't a lack of the right educational philosophy. It's the gap between policy and what actually happens in the classroom.
We can see that difference in what happens in an ordinary Malaysian classroom.
Take a Year 1 Science lesson on magnets.
In a conventional lesson, a teacher might explain that magnets attract certain materials, show the experiment, and ask pupils to identify which objects are magnetic.
But a teacher who leans into inquiry can start with a challenge: "How can we build a train carriage using recycled materials and magnets?"
Pupils predict what will happen, test different materials, build a model, figure out which designs work, and explain why. This isn't a made-up example. Malaysian research on Project-Based Inquiry Learning has documented Year 1 pupils using magnets and recycled materials to raise questions, explore possibilities, design a train carriage and reflect on their inventions.
The difference is subtle but profound.
In one classroom, the child learns what a magnet does. In the other, the child asks what a magnet can help me do.
Take Mathematics.
Instead of asking pupils to calculate the cost of five identical items, a teacher might pose a more real problem:
"Your class has RM200 to organise a healthy breakfast for 30 pupils. What should we buy, and how do we stay within budget?"
There may be several reasonable answers. Students have to compare prices, calculate quantities, make assumptions, justify their choices, and maybe rethink their decisions when a constraint changes.
The mathematics hasn't disappeared. It has become meaningful.
In the same way, in a secondary-school Accounting lesson, students could be given a fictional small business facing a cash-flow problem and asked to prepare a cash budget and explain which decisions might keep the business running. Malaysian research has found that project-based learning with scaffolding can improve students' mastery of HOTS in Form 4 Accounting.
Science offers even more possibilities.
Instead of simply teaching students that pollution affects water quality, a teacher could ask:
"Why does the drain near our school sometimes contain more rubbish after heavy rain?"
Students could observe the area, classify the waste, collect simple data, investigate possible sources and propose solutions. The teacher is still teaching scientific concepts but students are learning to investigate a problem that exists beyond the textbook.
There are also Malaysian examples of teachers explicitly helping students formulate investigable questions rather than merely answering questions the teacher supplies. Research involving Form One pupils in Negeri Sembilan, for example, looked at how teachers could guide students to create their own questions for open inquiry.
These are exactly the kinds of experiences Malaysia's HOTS policy envisions.
But they aren't yet the everyday experience of every Malaysian child.
This is where we need to be honest.
Teachers work within a demanding system: large classes, exam expectations, limited lesson time, administrative duties and pressure to finish the syllabus. A carefully designed inquiry lesson can take much longer than a teacher simply explaining the correct answer.
There are encouraging signs. Malaysia has continued training teachers to develop HOTS-oriented assessment items, including workshops involving teachers of Science, Mathematics, Bahasa Melayu and English.
Yet the challenge is moving from isolated good practice to a consistent classroom culture.
That matters even more because of artificial intelligence.
A student who memorises a textbook definition has acquired knowledge an AI system can retrieve almost instantly. But a student who can ask a penetrating question, tell evidence from opinion, recognise bias, challenge an assumption and formulate a new hypothesis has something much harder to automate.
AI therefore changes the purpose of education.
Schools shouldn't try to compete with machines in storing and retrieving information. They should develop the distinctly human capacities that make knowledge meaningful: curiosity, judgement, imagination, ethical reasoning, creativity and the ability to ask the right question.
This doesn't mean abandoning factual knowledge. Children need a strong foundation of knowledge before they can think deeply about a subject. The issue is balance: knowledge should become the raw material for thinking, not the final destination of education.
Malaysia therefore needs to move from an education culture where the teacher is mainly the giver of answers to one where the teacher is also a creator of curiosity.
The success of HOTS should ultimately be measured not just by how many policy documents mention it, but by what happens when a child raises a hand and asks an unexpected question.
Does the classroom silence the question because it's outside the syllabus?
Or does the teacher say:
"That's an interesting question. How can we find out?" That simple response could represent one of the most important changes Malaysia needs in its classrooms.
The goal of education should not be to produce children who have memorised yesterday's answers.
It should be to produce citizens confident enough to ask tomorrow's questions.
K.T.Maran Social Environmental Animal Activist
K.T. Maran (maran.kt@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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