Confusing thing today

I found some students do not use their brain while studying(sometimes include me). It is a dangerous signal to be a robot in acquiring knowledge. Like writing essay1, I can not come up with any ideas without the examples teacher already gave us. Remember years ago my dad reminded me brought my brain when I went to school. After that, I try figuring out what matter it is. But till today, it still confuse me. Meanwhile, many classmates going through it now. What's the key problem, sometimes its limitation of knowledge but most of time it's lack of thinking.