I recently started teaching a new batch of drama students, and as with every new batch, there is always a period of adjustment. I need to understand their personalities, they need to understand my teaching style, and somewhere in between, we need to establish a working relationship that allows us to learn, make mistakes, play, experiment and, hopefully, put on some decent drama. Ideally, we do all this without anyone losing their voice, their patience or their will to live. The last one is particularly important when you teach drama, because unlike some other subjects, you cannot simply ask everyone to open their textbooks to page 37 and quietly contemplate the meaning of life.
These students are, to put it politely, rather spirited. They are energetic, vocal and not particularly shy about expressing their opinions. Initially, I thought the challenge would be their unruliness. After all, managing a drama classroom requires a certain amount of structure. Students need to listen to instructions, respect one another's space, and understand that an activity involving twenty people cannot proceed if everyone decides to become the director at the same time.
But the more I observed them, the more I realised that the unruliness itself was not what bothered me most. Children are children. They test boundaries, get excited, become distracted, and occasionally behave as though the laws of physics do not apply to them. This is all part of working with young people. What began to trouble me was something else: the apparent need to prove that they were right and that I was wrong.
One particular exchange has stayed with me. We were discussing how certain words seem to have a particular texture or quality that can influence how we deliver them. In drama, the way we speak a word is not determined by its dictionary definition alone. Its sound, our intention, the context and even the physical sensations we associate with it can influence our vocal choices. I used the words smooth and rough as examples. Even without much explanation, we can imagine how the first might be delivered with a flowing, gentle quality, while the second might invite a harsher, more interrupted sound.
One student then suggested that water was another word with a texture.
I explained that, unlike smooth or rough, water does not necessarily suggest one fixed way of delivering a word. We could say it softly, sharply, excitedly or angrily, depending on the circumstances. There was no single vocal quality that the word itself demanded.
The student, however, was not quite ready to let the matter rest. She began moving her hands to imitate waves, adding a rolling movement of her shoulder to demonstrate what she meant. I explained that while her physical interpretation was creative, we would not ordinarily say the word water to someone in that particular manner during an everyday interaction. We might use that movement in a performance, but that was different from the way we would normally ask for a glass of water.
She then told me that she did, in fact, use the gesture when asking for water at restaurants and in the school canteen.
Now, I cannot claim to know what was going through her mind at that moment. Perhaps she genuinely believed that her example supported her argument. Perhaps she was trying to find a way to explain her interpretation. Or perhaps, like many of us when we are determined to defend a position, she was finding it difficult to let go of an idea she had already committed herself to.
What happened next was what made the exchange particularly memorable. Later, when she asked for permission to refill her water bottle, she simply made the request without the accompanying waves and shoulder movements. When I pointed out the difference between what she had just done and what she had claimed to do, she proceeded to demonstrate the gesture anyway.
At that point, the discussion about the word water had become almost beside the point. We were no longer simply exploring how words could be delivered through voice and movement. We were watching an argument continue because one person seemed determined to establish that her original position was correct.
I should clarify something here. There was nothing inherently wrong with her creative interpretation. In fact, if she had said that she could give the word water a wave-like quality through her physical performance, I would have agreed with her. That could have been an interesting starting point for an improvisation. Nor was the problem that she disagreed with me. Students should be able to challenge my explanations, and I would much rather they think about what I say than accept it blindly.
What interested me was the shift from exploring an idea to defending it at all costs. We could have used her suggestion to experiment with different ways of delivering the same word. Instead, the conversation became a contest over who was right.
It was a small classroom exchange, hardly the sort of incident that deserves a dramatic soundtrack and a slow-motion replay. Yet it left me thinking about something much bigger than the word water. What happens when the need to be right becomes more important than the opportunity to learn? And what happens if we carry that habit into adulthood?
Because we do not leave our habits at the school gate when we grow up. We carry them into friendships, workplaces, marriages, family gatherings and, if we are especially unfortunate, WhatsApp group chats.
Anyone who has ever watched a family discussion about where to eat will understand what I mean. One person suggests chicken rice. Another wants nasi padang. A third says everyone had rice yesterday, as though the consumption of rice were a matter requiring parliamentary review. Before long, the original question of lunch has become a debate about who never listens, who always gets their way, and why nobody appreciates the effort one person makes in organising family outings. We may eventually agree on a restaurant, but the real winner is usually the person who has remained quiet long enough to order.
The example is silly, of course, but it points towards something worth considering. A disagreement that begins with a difference in preference can become a contest over recognition. We are no longer trying to decide what to eat. We are trying to establish whether our opinions matter, whether we are being heard, and whether the other person respects us enough to take our suggestions seriously.
Perhaps this is one reason being wrong can feel so uncomfortable. Sometimes, the issue is no longer the correctness of our argument but what we believe that argument says about us. If I am wrong, does that mean I am less intelligent? If someone corrects me, does that mean they think I am stupid? If I concede a point, will the other person assume that I have nothing worthwhile to contribute?
These are not questions we necessarily ask ourselves consciously. They may simply emerge as defensiveness, irritation or an overwhelming urge to explain, one more time, why we are actually correct. We can become so occupied with protecting our sense of competence that we stop examining the possibility that the other person has something useful to say.
Psychologists and philosophers have explored related ideas under the term intellectual humility. In his 2012 paper, “Open-Mindedness and Intellectual Humility”, published in Theory and Research in Education, James S. Spiegel discusses the importance of recognising our limitations as knowers. Intellectual humility does not mean assuming that we know nothing, nor does it require us to abandon convictions whenever somebody disagrees with us. Rather, it involves recognising that our understanding is fallible and that confidence in a belief does not automatically make that belief correct.
I find this distinction important because we sometimes confuse humility with weakness. We imagine that admitting a mistake diminishes us, when in fact it may demonstrate that we are secure enough to reconsider our position. It takes a certain amount of confidence to say, “I hadn't thought about it that way,” without feeling that we have surrendered our entire identity in the process.
Consider a student who insists that a particular character in a play is selfish. The student has noticed that the character repeatedly puts personal interests first and has interpreted those actions accordingly. Another student argues that the character is frightened and is acting selfishly because they do not know how to deal with their fear. Both students may have evidence to support their interpretations. The first is looking at the character's actions; the second is considering the motivations behind those actions.
Now imagine that both students spend the next ten minutes trying to prove that the other is wrong. They may leave the discussion with their original opinions intact, but they will have missed an opportunity to understand the character more deeply. What if the character is selfish precisely because they are frightened? What if the fear explains the behaviour without excusing it? What if the most interesting interpretation emerges only when we put both perspectives together?
This is one of the reasons I value drama as an educational tool. A script is not always a mathematical equation with one correct answer at the end. Actors must make choices about intention, emotion, relationships and meaning. Two actors can perform the same scene with different interpretations and still produce something truthful. Their choices may even reveal possibilities that neither had considered before rehearsals began.
Of course, drama is not entirely free of right and wrong. If a student is instructed to enter from stage left and enters from stage right, there may be a practical reason to correct the choice. If the exercise requires a frozen tableau and everyone continues moving, we have not exactly achieved the objective. Creative freedom does not mean that instructions become decorative suggestions.
But within those boundaries, there is room for interpretation. A character can be played as arrogant or insecure, depending on the evidence in the text and the choices the actor makes. A scene can be funny to one audience and uncomfortable to another. The task is not always to discover one definitive answer but to develop an interpretation that can be supported, explored and communicated.
Perhaps the same principle applies to life more broadly. There are things we can establish with evidence, things we can reasonably infer, things that depend on personal preference, and things that remain genuinely uncertain. Our problem begins when we treat all four categories as though they belong in the same box.
If I say that Singapore is an island country, that is a factual statement we can verify. If I say that chicken rice is the greatest local dish, I have entered the territory of personal preference, and I am prepared to defend my position with considerable enthusiasm, although I accept that my enthusiasm does not constitute scientific evidence. If I say that a friend was rude because they did not reply to my message, I have made an interpretation based on incomplete information. Perhaps the friend was being dismissive. Perhaps they were busy, distracted or dealing with something they had not shared with me.
The problem is not that we form interpretations. We have to make sense of the world somehow. The problem is that we sometimes forget where the facts end and our interpretations begin. We mistake what we think happened for what definitely happened, and then defend our interpretation as though changing our minds would be an admission of intellectual defeat.
A study published in Child Development in June 2025, titled “Children's Developing Understanding of the Value of Disagreement for Learning”, examined how children aged four to eight and adults understood the value of talking to people who disagreed with them. Across two studies involving 200 children and 200 adults, participants were more likely to recognise the value of disagreement when a question had no single correct answer, such as questions involving preferences or ambiguous situations. Adults were also more likely than children to explain why disagreement could help someone learn.
I found this particularly interesting because it suggests that recognising the value of disagreement is something that develops, rather than an understanding we can simply assume everyone possesses. Knowing how to disagree productively is a skill. It involves recognising the nature of the question, considering the possibility of alternative interpretations and understanding that a different opinion is not necessarily an attack on our intelligence.
It also reminds us that growing older does not automatically make us wiser. Adults may become better at explaining why disagreement is useful, but that does not mean we always practise what we know. We have all encountered grown-ups who can manage complicated projects, pay bills, raise children and navigate the administrative requirements of modern life, yet become remarkably difficult when somebody disagrees with their opinion about something relatively trivial.
Age gives us more experience, but experience alone does not guarantee reflection. Sometimes it simply gives us more years to practise the same habits.
This brings me back to my students. If a child grows accustomed to treating disagreement as a competition, what happens when that child enters a workplace where colleagues have different ideas? What happens when a supervisor offers feedback, or when a friend points out that something they said was hurtful? Will they be able to consider the feedback on its merits, or will their first instinct be to establish why the other person is mistaken?
I do not mean that every student who argues with a teacher will grow into an argumentative adult. That would be an unfair and rather dramatic conclusion to draw from classroom observations. Young people are still learning how to manage emotions, communicate their thoughts and understand the effects of their behaviour on others. The very reason we educate them is that they are works in progress.
Nevertheless, the habits we practise repeatedly deserve our attention. If we want young people to become adults who can collaborate, solve problems and maintain relationships with people whose views differ from their own, we have to give them opportunities to practise those skills while they are young.
And this is where I think the conversation becomes particularly sensitive. As an educator, I have no desire to produce students who accept everything I say simply because I am standing at the front of the room. Authority should not be a substitute for reasoning. Teachers make mistakes, instructions can be unclear, and sometimes students notice things we have overlooked. A classroom in which nobody dares to question the teacher may be orderly, but orderliness alone tells us very little about whether learning is taking place.
I would much rather have a student ask me why an exercise is necessary than blindly follow the instruction without understanding its purpose. If I cannot explain what we are doing or why we are doing it, perhaps I need to reconsider my teaching. Questioning authority can be an important part of learning, particularly when it encourages us to examine assumptions that have gone unchallenged for too long.
The distinction, however, lies in what we do after the question has been asked.
There is a difference between saying, “I don't understand why we need to do this. Could you explain it to me?” and treating every explanation as an opportunity to prove that the teacher has made a mistake. There is a difference between presenting an alternative idea and refusing to consider any response that does not confirm our original position. The former invites a conversation. The latter risks turning a conversation into a courtroom in which everyone is both lawyer and defendant, and nobody is interested in going home until the judge declares them victorious.
In the classroom, I would like students to understand that they are allowed to disagree with me, but they also need to learn how to disagree. They can challenge an interpretation, question an instruction or propose a different approach. In return, they should be prepared to listen to the explanation, examine the reasoning and consider whether their own position needs to change. If they still disagree after doing so, we can discuss the disagreement itself. The objective is not to eliminate their voices but to help them use those voices more thoughtfully.
This is not always easy to teach, particularly when the need to defend a position is accompanied by strong emotions. A student may interpret a correction as embarrassment, or perceive a teacher's disagreement as an attempt to exercise power. An educator, meanwhile, may feel that a lesson is being derailed and respond with frustration. Before long, both parties are defending themselves, and the original learning opportunity has disappeared beneath the need to establish who has the upper hand.
The adult in the room has a responsibility to recognise this possibility. I cannot expect students to learn how to manage disagreement if I respond to every challenge as a personal affront. If I demand that they acknowledge their mistakes, I must also be willing to acknowledge mine. And if I want them to listen to my reasoning, I need to demonstrate that listening is a two-way responsibility.
That does not mean every disagreement must become a lengthy debate. A teacher still has a lesson to conduct, a group of students to manage and a finite amount of time in which to accomplish the learning objectives. There are moments when an explanation is necessary, moments when further discussion is useful, and moments when the class needs to move on. Learning to disagree respectfully also involves recognising when a conversation has served its purpose.
Perhaps one practical starting point is to ask students a question that sounds simple but can be surprisingly difficult to answer: “What would make you change your mind?”
The question shifts the focus from defending a conclusion to examining the reasoning behind it. If the answer is that nothing could change their mind, then we might ask what evidence they are considering and whether their position is open to examination at all. If the answer is that they would reconsider after hearing a convincing explanation, we have a useful starting point for discussion.
Another question might be, “Can you explain the other person's point of view in a way that they would agree is fair?” Before arguing against another person's position, a student would first have to demonstrate that they understand it. This does not require them to agree with that position. It simply requires them to represent it honestly rather than reducing it to something easier to dismiss.
These are not magical questions that will transform every difficult classroom interaction into a scene of enlightenment. Some students will still argue, some will misunderstand the exercise, and some will probably ask whether they can use the activity to prove that their teacher is wrong. At least that last response would demonstrate a certain consistency of character.
But the larger objective is to create a culture in which changing one's mind is not treated as humiliation. When a student corrects an error, we can acknowledge the correction without making a spectacle of the mistake. When a student offers a thoughtful alternative, we can recognise the quality of the reasoning even if we do not ultimately accept the conclusion. When a student discovers that their original interpretation was incomplete, we can treat that discovery as part of the learning process rather than evidence of failure.
Research on growth mindset offers a related perspective, although it is important not to oversell what it can achieve. The American Psychological Association's educational guidance on thinking and learning explains that students' beliefs about their abilities can influence how they respond to challenges, feedback and failure. The underlying educational idea is that ability can develop and that mistakes can provide information for improvement. However, a 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis by Brooke N. Macnamara and Alexander P. Burgoyne, published in Psychological Bulletin, found that the overall academic benefits of growth-mindset interventions were very small and were not statistically significant after adjustment for potential publication bias. In other words, simply telling students that mistakes are opportunities to learn is unlikely to be enough on its own.
That qualification matters. We cannot expect a poster on the classroom wall to undo years of habits, nor can we assume that a single discussion about humility will suddenly make everyone receptive to criticism. Students need an environment in which the principles we teach are reflected in the way we respond to them. If we praise independent thinking but punish every challenge, our actions will teach a different lesson from our words.
Ultimately, I hope students learn that their worth does not depend on being right all the time. A person who can admit a mistake is not necessarily less intelligent than someone who never admits one. The person who listens carefully before responding is not less confident than the person who always has an answer ready. And the person who says, “I see your point, although I still disagree,” has not surrendered their principles merely because they have acknowledged someone else's perspective.
In fact, being able to do these things may require a more secure sense of self than we sometimes realise. If our confidence depends on winning every disagreement, then every conversation becomes a potential threat. We have to defend our position, protect our reputation and ensure that nobody leaves the room thinking we might have been mistaken. That is an exhausting way to live, especially when life provides an almost unlimited supply of people who will disagree with us about absolutely everything.
Of course, we must also be careful not to turn the idea of intellectual humility into an excuse for avoiding difficult questions. There are matters in which evidence clearly supports one conclusion over another. There are harmful behaviours that should be challenged, and situations in which remaining silent can allow injustice to continue. Not every disagreement is an equally valid difference of opinion, and not every conflict can be resolved by politely agreeing to disagree.
If someone insists that the Earth is flat, we do not have to pretend that both positions are equally supported by evidence. If someone treats another person unfairly, we should not automatically dismiss the issue as a difference in perspective. Intellectual humility means being willing to examine our own reasoning; it does not mean abandoning evidence or moral responsibility.
The point is to learn to distinguish between situations that require us to establish what is true, situations in which we need to make a judgement based on incomplete information, and situations in which reasonable people can reach different conclusions because they value different things. We need to recognise when to stand firm, when to reconsider and when to accept that a difference may remain unresolved.
This is particularly important in a society as diverse as Singapore, where people of different backgrounds, experiences and beliefs share the same physical and social spaces. We may have different ideas about education, parenting, language, culture, religion, politics and what constitutes a successful life. We will not always agree, nor should we expect to. A society in which everyone thinks exactly alike would be a rather worrying place, even if its meetings were wonderfully efficient.
But living together requires more than the ability to express an opinion. It requires the ability to encounter an opposing view without immediately assuming bad intentions, to examine an argument without reducing the person making it to a caricature, and to accept that disagreement does not automatically make cooperation impossible.
Otherwise, we risk becoming very good at expressing ourselves and rather poor at understanding one another. We may become increasingly articulate in explaining why we are right, while losing the ability to ask whether we have understood the situation correctly in the first place.
And perhaps this is the real question I want to explore through my drama classroom. When students challenge me, I need to ask myself whether they are questioning an idea, testing a boundary, seeking recognition or simply learning how to navigate disagreement. I cannot assume that every challenge has the same motivation. My responsibility is to respond in a way that preserves their willingness to think independently while helping them understand that independence also requires accountability.
At the same time, I hope they learn that the purpose of an argument is not always to defeat another person. Sometimes the purpose is to discover that our original position was mistaken. Sometimes it is to understand why another person sees things differently. Sometimes it is to arrive at a better idea than either person could have developed alone. And sometimes, after we have listened carefully and explained ourselves honestly, we may still have to accept that we see the matter differently.
There is no shame in that. We do not have to agree on every interpretation, preference or judgement to continue learning from one another. Nor must every conversation end with a winner and a loser, as though human interaction were an Olympic sport with medals awarded for the most convincing comeback.
Perhaps what we need to teach young people is not simply how to defend their opinions, but how to hold those opinions with enough confidence to express them and enough humility to examine them. The two are not contradictory. We can believe strongly in something while remaining curious about what we might have missed.
I am still figuring out how best to bring this into my own teaching. Drama gives me a space in which students can experiment with perspectives, inhabit characters whose choices they might not personally make, and discover that understanding a person is not the same as agreeing with them. Whether that experience will change how they approach disagreements outside the classroom is something I cannot know immediately. Learning takes time, and not every lesson produces an observable result by the end of the session.
But I keep returning to the same thought: if we want our children to grow into adults who can think critically, we must also help them develop the courage to be corrected. If we want them to question authority, we must teach them to question their own assumptions too. And if we want them to stand up for what they believe in, we should help them understand that their dignity does not depend on convincing everyone else that they are right.
After all, there is a difference between having the last word and having something worth saying. The former may win us an argument. The latter might actually help us learn something.
And if, by the end of the drama lesson, my students can disagree with one another without turning the classroom into a courtroom, I would consider that a rather worthwhile performance. No applause necessary. Though, as a drama educator, I would not complain if there were some.
Written by: Adi Jamaludin
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