After weeks of discussing the U.S. economy and the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, I gave my students an unusual assignment: to play the role of financial journalists and prepare three questions for a senior Fed official.
I told them I would not grade their answers.
I would note their questions.
The reaction was immediate – and revealing. Students who were comfortable explaining concepts suddenly became hesitant. Others leaned in, thinking more carefully than they had all semester. The exercise revealed something simple but troubling: While students are trained to answer questions, they are rarely taught how to ask them.
In a world where answers are increasingly easy to generate, the most important skill is knowing what to ask. Yet our education system is not designed to teach it.
If we are serious about preparing students for the future, we need to rethink what we value. We need to move from teaching what to think to teaching how to think, prioritizing curiosity, reasoning, judgment, and the ability to confront complexity. And we need to put more emphasis on questions.
For generations, education in the United States and elsewhere has followed a familiar pattern: teachers transmit knowledge, students absorb it, and success is measured by how accurately students can reproduce it. Standardized tests reward accuracy. Grades reward accuracy. The system rewards responses.
This model made sense when information was scarce.
But today, information is abundant – almost overwhelmingly so. With a smartphone, students can access more knowledge in seconds than previous generations could do in a few years. Artificial intelligence (AI) can summarize, analyze and generate content almost instantly.
Yet our classrooms still operate as if access to information is the main challenge. It’s not. The real challenge is making sense of it.
Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free bi-weekly higher education newsletter.
When information is scarce, education is about access. When information is abundant, you have to be discerning – deciding what is reliable, what is relevant, and what is worth paying attention to.
But we continue to prioritize memorization over meaning and answers over research.
In doing so, we risk producing students who are well-trained to respond but ill-equipped to think. The rise of AI has made this gap impossible to ignore.
Much of the concern about AI focuses on job loss. And it is true that routine tasks, both physical and cognitive, are increasingly automated. But that doesn’t make human intelligence obsolete. This changes the types of intelligence that matter.
Machines excel at processing information, identifying patterns, and performing well-defined tasks. But processing information is not the same as exercising human judgment, especially when the problems involve context, ambiguity, ethics and creativity.
In other words, the more efficient our machines become, the more valuable human skills become.
Among these skills is the ability to ask meaningful questions. Of course, AI can generate answers in seconds. But the quality and usefulness of these answers depends greatly on the questions and instructions given. A vague question produces a vague answer. A thoughtful question produces insight.
The tool does not define the problem. We do it. However, from elementary school to middle school, students are evaluated on their ability to answer questions asked by others.
The questions are structured. The settings are clear. The solutions are known. But the real world doesn’t present problems this way.
It presents complicated, evolving and often ill-defined challenges. Before solving them, we must first determine what the question really is.
And this is precisely what we do not teach. We prepare students for a world of answers while entering a world of questions.
That classroom experience stayed with me. My students had spent weeks learning about economics and monetary policy. Yet when asked to go beyond answering questions to formulating their own, many struggled.
This is the challenge that awaits us. The United States has long prided itself on its innovation. But innovation does not come from a system that effectively discourages questioning. It comes from the one who cultivates it.
Related: OPINION: Knowing how to use AI tools is not the same as knowing how to apply them responsibly. Colleges must do more
We are now faced with a choice.
We can continue to perfect an education system designed for a different era – a system that rewards correct answers. Or we can build one that prepares students for a world defined by uncertainty, complexity, and constant change.
This world will not reward those who simply know. This will reward those who know how to think. And thinking begins not with answers, but with better questions.
Hiranya K. Nath is professor emeritus of economics at Sam Houston State University. He has taught economics at the university level for more than two decades. The opinions expressed are his own.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about college and AI was produced by The Hechinger reportan independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Register with Hechinger weekly newsletter.
The article TEACHER’S VOICE: Students are trained to answer questions, but they are rarely taught how to ask them appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
