**“The Forgotten Questions Behind Our Knowledge”**
As a teacher, I often sit in classrooms filled with formulas, theorems, laws, and definitions neatly written on the board. Students memorize them, solve problems with them, sometimes even score well with them. But deep inside, I keep asking myself: *do they really understand what these words mean?*
You see, everything we study today—be it in science, philosophy, economics, or engineering—was once an *answer*. But an answer to what? To a question someone, somewhere, bravely asked.
Take a simple example. Newton’s Laws of Motion. In every textbook, they sit like commandments. But before Newton, there was a question: *why do things move the way they do? Why does the apple fall, why does the planet not?* It was this burning curiosity that gave birth to the answers we now recite. Yet in classrooms, we only inherit the answers, rarely the question.
This is the tragedy of our academic system: we treat knowledge as a fixed monument, not as a living conversation. We worship the answer but forget the curiosity that built it. And when you forget the question, the answer becomes hollow—a set of words to remember, not a truth to understand.
Imagine if, instead of starting with Archimedes’ principle, we began with the question he must have had: *why does the crown not weigh the same in water as in air?* Imagine if, instead of starting with Ohm’s law, we asked: *how exactly does electricity behave when it flows through different materials?* Suddenly, the subject breathes. It no longer feels like a rule imposed, but a discovery shared.
When I tell my students this, I ask them to stop for a moment before they read the next definition. Don’t ask, *what is the answer?* Ask instead, *what was the question?* Because when you search for the real question, you begin to see knowledge differently. The subject comes alive, and you are no longer a passive receiver of facts—you are a participant in the same adventure that drove Newton, Archimedes, or Einstein.
Knowledge without its question is like a skeleton without life. But knowledge with its question becomes a story, a journey, an unfolding mystery.
So my philosophy as a faculty is simple: seek the real question. Don’t settle for memorizing answers. If you find the question behind what you’re studying, the answer will not only make sense—it will stay with you forever.
And who knows? In chasing questions, you might even find new ones that no one has asked yet. That is where true learning begins.