“Ask me a hundred times and I will explain,” says the teacher who doesn’t have the patience to listen to the student.

You ask the same question one more time, and most teachers will go, “Why did you not listen the first time?”

Yeah, how dare I not listen? How dare I not get the concept right the first time! The same educational system forces and trains you to rote-learn your lessons. Otherwise, how am I supposed to know how many kilometres Earth is from the Sun?

What’s conceptual here? What exactly is conceptual about memorising numbers? When students are constantly told to memorise numbers, formulas and steps without anyone explaining the logic behind them or where they come from, what are we really teaching them?

One student questions whether our classrooms leave enough room for asking questions, making mistakes and learning at our own pace

We are training them to rote-learn and then blaming them for not understanding the “concept”. Somehow, these kids are expected to magically switch from memorising to understanding.

Where exactly is that switch in my brain that I’m supposed to press to stop myself from “just rote learning” and suddenly start listening to and focusing on the concepts?

Teaching concepts on the board without any visualisation and simply telling students to “focus on the concept” is not always enough to help them understand and remember what they are learning.

“It’s alright, I am your teacher; if you face any issue, tell me,” is what the teacher will say at the end of a lesson. And when you actually go to them, they are like, “It’s your fault. What were you doing in the class when I was explaining?”

And before you can even explain your problem, they won’t let you complete your sentence, “We discussed this two days ago! You guys don’t study at all!”

Teachers keep talking about learning, understanding and building concepts, and then turn around and ask us questions about topics from previous grades. But now my subjects are different. How am I supposed to remember everything from years ago when I have now chosen to study a new subject?

What a hypocrisy!

Tell me this: I did prepare for the quiz. I sat down, practised and went over the material. But I forgot some of it. The clock kept ticking, every second reminding me that I was running out of time. The number of questions on the sheet seemed to scream at me. The time limit was right there, putting even more pressure on me.

And then, because I could not answer quickly enough, I was made to feel as if I simply did not understand. How convenient!

Just because I have chosen to study this new subject does not mean I have spent years learning it. I am new to it, I am curious and I want to learn. But I am entering a completely different world. I need time to understand how it works, to make mistakes, to forget, to try again and eventually get better. I understood the concept. I just needed another minute.

Then comes the experience problem…

Teachers have ‘years and years’ of experience. They are double, sometimes triple, our age. Some of them have been teaching since before we were even born. Their subject is like a piece of cake for them. Everything is now part of their unconscious brain, and they can quickly identify all the content of the syllabus and the formulas.

Does that experience give them the right to ask someone who is looking at this for the first time why they don’t know something?

And then there is this habit of firing questions at students and expecting them to immediately spit out the answers. Alright, I understand that you are trying to challenge students to think. But I need to process the question!

For adults, the questions may be simple, but for us, those questions sometimes need to be rephrased. Teachers expect students to automatically understand their half-formed questions and immediately come up with the right answer.

Why is a silly question proof that I am not capable, or a slow answer proof that I am not smart? Since when did learning become a speed test?

Dear teachers,

You are supposed to know more than the student. You are supposed to have the experience your student doesn’t have.

You are supposed to find another way of explaining something when they don’t understand it. You are supposed to remember what it felt like not to know.

A teacher who cannot be patient with someone learning for the first time has forgotten the foundation of teaching. You are supposed to be the person helping them get to a position where they feel safe to ask you a question, even for the hundredth time.

And if you cannot do that, you should not be in this profession.

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 3rd, 2026