LETTERS: When Education Minister, Datuk Seri Fadhlina Sidek, told Parliament that 329,414 teachers had received AI training, it signalled that Malaysia is moving from debating artificial intelligence (AI) to institutionalising it.
The real work starts now. For the last decade, we taught children how to use technology. AI, however, demands something different. We must teach them to question it.
A child who can prompt a generative AI app to write an essay, but cannot judge whether it is accurate, biased or original, has not been empowered.
The most important line in the minister’s reply when questioned in Parliament was this: “AI can never take over the fundamental role of teachers.”
AI is excellent at personalisation at scale. It can adapt a maths problem to a student’s level, give instant feedback and translate content into several languages.
What it cannot do is notice that a usually bright student has gone quiet for three days. It cannot model integrity when a student is tempted to cheat. It cannot teach resilience after failure.
The teacher’s role is shifting from a sole source of knowledge to a curator of knowledge, a coach for critical thinking and a guardian of human values. That demands a different kind of professional development: continuous, classroom-based and peer-led, not one-off workshops.
Get this wrong, and we risk two kinds of classrooms. In one, well-resourced teachers use AI to deepen inquiry. In the other, overworked teachers use AI to generate worksheets.
Both use AI. Only one educates. The 3M skills of reading, writing and arithmetic remain foundational. A student who uses AI to bypass the struggle of writing never learns to structure thought. We must hold to a simple principle: AI after thinking, not before it.
Malaysia has a chance to lead with a distinctly Malaysian model of AI in education, one that is less about automation and more about adab, or ethical conduct.
We suggest three steps. First, make AI training about pedagogy, not product. Stop training teachers on specific apps that will be obsolete in six months.
Train them on principles: how to design AI-resistant assignments, how to use AI for formative assessment, and how to foster Socratic questioning in an AI-saturated world.
Second, protect time for human learning. Mandate AI-free zones and tasks in the curriculum. Every student should regularly write, debate and resolve problems without AI, not out of nostalgia, but to build the cognitive muscles that make them effective users of AI later.
Third, audit before you expand. Before the full curriculum rollout next year, publish a transparent audit. Where are the 329,414 trained teachers located? What infrastructure exists in their schools? What impact has the training had on classroom practice? Data should drive deployment.
Technology will keep changing, but the purpose of education does not: to teach children to think, uphold human values and care for others.
PROFESSOR SIVABALA NAIDU,
PROFESSOR RANJIT SINGH GILL
Faculty of Social Sciences,
Quest International University
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times