Why AI Won’t Replace Teachers In Classrooms: An ASEAN Perspective – OpEd
UNESCO warns that to meet basic education goals by 2030 the world will actually need tens of millions of additional teachers. McKinsey similarly finds that teacher numbers are set to grow, not shrink – estimating school-teacher employment rising 5–24% by 2030 (in the US), and even more than doubling in rapidly developing countries like China and India.
It might be tempting to imagine a future where sleek AI tutors quietly replace the traditional teacher at the blackboard. In practical terms, AI tools can indeed personalize content, automate grading, and provide data-driven insights to educators. Yet these very reports also note a key caveat: institutions are reluctant to “replace traditional teaching/learning methods” wholesale.
In other words, schools are quick to embrace AI as a tool, not a substitute. Meanwhile, global trends in education tell a starkly different story than teacher obsolescence.
The demand for qualified educators is surging even as AI marches forward. As one ASEAN policy brief notes, the quality of education “hinges on the calibre of its teachers” – they remain “the single most impactful factor” in student learning outcomes.
Balancing an AI Boom with a Teacher Gap
Indeed, the very growth of the AI-education market underscores the tension between innovation and human needs. By some counts, the global AI-in-education industry could reach over $100 billion by the mid-2030s, driven by demand for personalized learning and smart platforms.
Yet even market analysts concede that AI’s rise faces limits: one study explicitly lists institutional “reluctance… to replace traditional teaching” as a major restraint.
The practical effect is that today’s AI tools tend to augment teachers – automating rote tasks, delivering real-time feedback, or crafting adaptive exercises – rather than standing in for them. For example, AI-driven platforms can free educators from grading or record-keeping, theoretically giving them “more time for their students”.
In theory, this could let teachers pour extra energy into mentoring, differentiation, or reaching disengaged learners. However, even the vendors of these tools highlight that they function best as aids: to “deliver tailored instruction and support” alongside human guidance.
In practice, few policymakers or teachers envision a total AI takeover; instead, many see a future where technology handles menial duties while the teacher focuses on the irreplaceable job of human connection.
At the same time, multiple reports underscore that the education system still has an enormous teacher shortage to solve. UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring report calculates that by 2030 the world must recruit roughly 44 million new primary and secondary teachers to achieve universal schooling. Strikingly, that report notes 4.5 million of those needed teachers will be in Southeast Asia alone.
In Malaysia and the wider ASEAN region, this shortfall is keenly felt: classrooms are crowded and attrition is high. As Dr. Carlos Tames of UNESCO warns, failing to close this gap would “threaten the attainment of universal basic education” and further degrade education quality. Even in relatively well-resourced places, teacher burnout and turnover remain problems.
The result is that, paradoxically, educational systems are crying out for more – not fewer – human teachers, precisely as AI gains traction. This global imbalance suggests that replacing teachers with machines is neither imminent nor, arguably, desirable.
ASEAN and Malaysia: Embracing Technology, Empowering Teachers
In ASEAN policy circles, there is broad recognition that digital tools must serve teachers, not supplant them. The 2022 ASEAN Declaration on Digital Transformation of Education exhorts member states to integrate ICT into schools while explicitly linking those plans to national visions and inclusive strategies.
For example, the declaration urges countries to “connect the digital transformation of education with national and ASEAN-wide… plans” that span learning and new workplace competencies. It also calls for strong public-private partnerships – even working with telecom firms – to ensure internet connectivity and affordable access for all learners.
These commitments reflect an understanding that technology must be thoughtfully governed and aligned with human-centered education goals. Malaysia, for its part, has launched an ambitious Digital Education Policy 2023 to tie classroom innovation directly to economic aims.
The policy notes that the digital economy is projected to contribute 25.5% of Malaysia’s GDP by 2025, and it seeks to prepare students accordingly. Crucially, however, the Malaysian Ministry of Education also acknowledges gaps in teacher readiness: government data show only about 2% of Malaysian teachers currently score at “Advanced” proficiency in digital competencies.
In practice, this means most educators are still at a “Basic” level of tech comfort. Thus Malaysia’s strategy not only provides devices and AI pilots, but also invests in teacher training programs (for example, a 2023 “AI Playbook” pilot) to help teachers learn how to use these tools effectively.
This pattern – ambitious tech deployment paired with teacher support – is mirrored region-wide. UNESCO has been actively advising ASEAN countries on AI in education. Its “AI and Education: Guidance for Policy-Makers” report and accompanying competency frameworks explicitly frame AI as a human-centered, inclusive technology.
UNESCO stresses that technology must be harnessed under principles of equity, and it even released an “AI competency framework” for teachers (and students) so they can grasp AI’s benefits and pitfalls. In short, both ASEAN ministers and international bodies are preparing educators to work with AI – not be written out of the script. Teachers are invited to co-design tools and share best practices, ensuring that AI adoption is carefully aligned with local educational needs.
The Human Factor: Emotion, Ethics, and Culture
Beyond policy, the real game-changer is what teachers bring to the classroom that no algorithm can replicate: the emotional, moral, and cultural dimensions of education. Teachers in ASEAN societies often serve as more than instructors of math or science – they are mentors, value-guides, and community anchors.
As one Singaporean educator remarked at an ASEAN forum, teachers “should not only serve as preservers and promoters of values but also act as shapers of characters”. In Malaysia and its neighbors, a teacher might counsel a struggling teenager in private, instill community norms in a classroom discussion, or adapt lessons to local languages and stories.
These deeply human roles – empathy in times of crisis, ethical modeling, cultural translation – lie far beyond the reach of today’s AI. Social-emotional learning (SEL) research highlights this point. Students develop resilience, empathy, and self-control largely through human interactions in schools.
A global OECD survey found that children who feel supported by their teachers report higher persistence, curiosity, optimism, and tolerance. In other words, teacher-student rapport literally shapes personality and motivation.
Neuroscience is beginning to illuminate why. Brain-imaging studies show that an engaged human teacher and a pupil can become neurologically “synchronised” in ways that boost learning. In one study, students who listened to a live lecturer had brain activity patterns in higher-order regions that closely matched their teacher’s own brain – and remarkably, the tighter this neural coupling, the more the student learned.
Another experiment showed that after an interactive lesson (as opposed to a passive video), teacher and student brains even became aligned at rest, a change linked to stronger social bonding. These findings underscore a subtle but profound truth: effective teaching involves not just delivering information, but communicating it through human connection.
Moreover, neuroscience tells us that emotions are part of learning. A child’s brain literally lights up with curiosity or insight only when emotional and cognitive circuits work together. For instance, UNESCO-affiliated research notes that social-emotional learning engages overlapping neural pathways with academic skills. In practice, this means a caring teacher – someone who makes a lesson personally relevant or praises a student’s effort – can trigger mental processes that an impersonal machine might miss.
In ASEAN region’s collectivist cultures, where respect and harmony are core values, the teacher’s role in modeling social norms is especially salient. These layers of context and feeling simply cannot be coded into a program. They come from the lived wisdom of human educators, their understanding of local culture, and their capacity to care.
Toward a Blended Future
So, what to expect in 10 years (2035)? Regardless, the human role will simply adapt, not vanish. All of this suggests that the real future of ASEAN education will be blended, not binary.
AI will play a growing role – there is no doubt it will become as commonplace as projectors or online textbooks – but as a powerful assistant to teachers, not their replacement. Already, many schools use AI-powered tutors, translation apps, and analytics to tailor learning.
These tools can save teachers’ time: for example, automating routine grading or highlighting which students need extra help. If implemented wisely, McKinsey argues, such automation could free teachers from paperwork and let them “pour… time into improving student outcomes”.
Indeed, McKinsey’s advice is clear: countries should “build teacher and school-leader capacity” around new tech, ensure equitable investment, and share best practices so that AI “is a boon and not a bane” for educators. This vision is already finding practical expressions.
In Malaysia, for instance, pilot projects like Google’s AI-powered “Gemini Academy” are training teachers to co-create AI-infused lessons. Singapore’s Teachers’ AI Playbook similarly encourages educators to experiment with AI tools they help design. Such initiatives recognize that teachers must be in the loop: the best outcomes come when educators decide how to use AI to enhance their own pedagogy.
In some frameworks being worked upon, there is talk of cross-country fellowships and resource-sharing so that innovation doesn’t just happen in isolation. In other words, technology can spread good ideas, but it is teachers who seed and nurture those ideas in each classroom. All evidence points to a future in which classrooms in Malaysia and its neighbors become richly digital and deeply human.
A student might one day do math drills with a game-like AI tutor for homework, then come to class eager to discuss the ideas, guided by a teacher who knows her story. A classroom debate on climate change could use augmented reality visuals created by software, but the teacher will frame the ethical questions and turn it into a civic lesson.
In the busiest schools, AI might help schedule parent-teacher conferences, track attendance, or even translate lectures into multiple languages simultaneously, yet the teacher remains the one who listens to parental concerns and understands which cultural examples resonate with the students. In short, AI’s promised efficiencies will liberate time and data, but teachers will channel those into genuinely human ends.
Conclusion: Charting a Values-Driven Future
Ultimately, the question is not whether AI can take over tasks, but what kind of education society truly values. If our goal is merely the efficient transmission of facts, one might naively think machines could do the job. But if we believe education must also cultivate conscience, curiosity, and community, then the answer is clear: human teachers remain at its heart.
As classrooms in ASEAN evolve, they will inevitably look different – more connected, more resource-rich, more tailored to each learner. But they will continue to be places where students look up to a human guide, where laughter, question-and-answer, and even the occasional reprimand happen face-to-face. In the end, we must decide: do we want an education system that prizes empathy, cultural wisdom and human judgment, or one that values only algorithmic efficiency?
The policies being forged in ASEAN today – from Malaysia’s Ministry of Education to UNESCO and ASEAN declarations – suggest a hope that we will choose wisely. The future need not be a choice of teacher versus AI, but of a richer collaboration: forging an education that combines the best of both.
In doing so, we can ensure that every child in Southeast Asia grows up guided by a human educator who can truly understand them, inspire them, and help them flourish in an increasingly complex world.
Dr. Sameer Kumar, Associate Professor, Asia-Europe Institute, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.
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