Kuala Lampur, Sept. 3 -- The heartbreaking floods in Nepal should make us stop and think about what education truly means. Lives have been lost, families have been separated, homes have disappeared and children have watched familiar places vanish within minutes. Behind every photograph and statistic is a human being whose life may never be the same again.

Our teachers should not allow tragedies like this to pass through the classroom merely as another piece of news. The curriculum may already be crowded, but teaching values and empathy does not require another subject or another examination. It requires teachers to interpret the existing curriculum with humanity.

A geography lesson on floods can become a conversation about families who ...