SEPTEMBER 3 — The heartbreaking floods in Nepal should make us stop and think about what education truly means. Lives have been lost, families have been separated, homes have disappeared and children have watched familiar places vanish within minutes. Behind every photograph and statistic is a human being whose life may never be the same again.

Our teachers should not allow tragedies like this to pass through the classroom merely as another piece of news. The curriculum may already be crowded, but teaching values and empathy does not require another subject or another examination. It requires teachers to interpret the existing curriculum with humanity.

A geography lesson on floods can become a conversation about families who lose everything overnight. A science lesson on climate and glaciers can ask students to consider our responsibility towards the environment. In language classes, students can write letters of sympathy, reflections or messages of hope to affected children. Mathematics teachers can use humanitarian data to discuss the scale of displacement while reminding students that numbers represent real people. Moral and religious education can explore compassion, charity, gratitude and our duty towards those who suffer.

Most importantly, teachers should ask simple questions: “How would you feel if this happened to your family?” “What would you need most?” and “What can we do for people we may never meet?” These questions may teach more about humanity than pages of definitions about values.

Education should produce students who do not scroll past another person’s suffering without feeling anything. We should be deeply worried if our children can achieve excellent grades but remain untouched by human tragedy. The people of Nepal may be far from our classrooms, but their grief should not be far from our hearts. Perhaps the greatest curriculum is the one that teaches our children to feel another person’s pain and then inspires them to care.

* Dr Muhammad Noor Abdul Aziz is an associate professor with the School of Education, Universiti Utara Malaysia

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.