Not everyone who stands at the board is a teacher; some merely deliver information… others shape human beings.
Dr. Jasem Malik passed away a few days ago, and I felt that Kuwait did not lose a person— it lost an entire educational institution walking on two feet.
Malik was different. He didn’t stop at delivering lessons; he built their very tools: “The Success-Makers Planner,” “The Legendary Teacher,” “The Family Planner.”
He trained teachers to be mission-driven, not just employees, and taught students that curiosity matters more than memorization.
He always asked:
“Do we want a generation that memorizes lessons… or one that creates them?”
His training sessions were never superficial; he insisted on reigniting the teacher’s passion for his mission before handing him teaching skills— convinced that when a teacher rediscovers his meaning, he regains his students’ respect and trust.
His departure left me with a bitter question: Have our schools prepared real teachers… or mere repeaters?
Today, an entire generation walks into classrooms only to find a weary teacher— drained by routine, more afraid of mistakes than eager for what’s right.
Educational systems that produce teachers of “Malik’s calibre” are rare, because forging a teacher is harder than designing a curriculum.
We change textbooks every year, yet leave the teacher untrained, un-inspired, without meaning… then wonder why some of our children wish for death rather than returning to school.
I saw with my own eyes how some of his trainees and students were moved— not by what he told them, but by what he embodied before them: a living role-model who taught ethics before curriculum.
He saw in every student a project-in-the-making of a human being, and in every teacher a seed of renaissance.
His passing taught me a personal lesson: the greatest investment in education is to plant meaning in a teacher’s heart first.
A teacher who discovers his mission becomes stronger than any smart device and deeper than any printed syllabus.
We urgently need national programs that restore the teacher’s stature as a role-model and shaper of generations’ identity— otherwise, we will keep changing books while ignoring the very human being who teaches them.
The master has died… yet the question lives on:
How many Dr. Jasem Maliks do we need to save education in Kuwait?
Do our colleges of education have the power to graduate mission-driven teachers, or are we still graduating slide-show readers and lesson-plan fillers?
Perhaps his passing is a silent call to reassess ourselves: we face a “crisis of the teacher’s meaning” before a crisis of curricula.
Education is not measured by how many smart devices a classroom has, but by how many teachers plant meaning in young minds.
A true teacher does not teach a subject… he teaches meaning.
That is the legacy Dr. Jasem Malik left us— a lesson that must never die.
Let us honour him in the only way worthy of his legacy: to make every teacher in our schools a project of renaissance… not merely a conveyor of a textbook.
