Let kids embrace AI at their own pace

ARTIFICIAL intelligence (AI) is here, and it seems that you and I will have to negotiate it today or tomorrow. Yet, it unsettles me that even students of Class III (hardly nine-year-old) have to learn AI as a mandatory subject. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to introduce AI for all students from Class III onwards from the 2026-27 academic session.

In order to go deeper into the meaning of this move, or what the Ministry of Education regards as “one of the significant curriculum overhauls in modern history”, it is important to reflect on two issues relating to the rhythm of life, technology, culture and pedagogy.

To begin with, it is important to understand that in these hyper-modern times, we are almost compelled to accept every new piece of technological innovation — and quite often, without the slightest ambiguity. However, this constraint is often transformed into a form of seduction. It is not uncommon to see even three-year-old kids ‘playing’ with smartphones; and the resultant addiction to the screen is making it increasingly difficult for them to look at the open, vast sky, see a tree, notice a bird flying or feel the rhythmic play of a flower and a butterfly. Yes, technological gadgets seem to have colonised their souls.

As we normalise this invasion of technology in almost every domain of life, it is, therefore, not surprising that the CBSE too feels that even children of Class III should not lag behind, and must begin to learn the fundamentals of AI through ‘playful/interactive’ methods’.

Moreover, who can say ‘no’ to AI, particularly when the techno-corporate elite and the market-driven advertising machinery keep reminding us of its ‘revolutionary’ potential? And possibly, many ambitious parents also think that in this fast-changing world, if their children do not feel comfortable with AI as early as possible, they will lag behind and fail to cope with newly emerging fields like data analysis, robotics and design innovation!

However, amid this techno-seduction, we should not forget that not everything is necessarily promising about the use of AI in the realm of education. Professors of leading IITs and IIMs have expressed serious concern over this trend. Recently, Prof Ranjan Banerjee — the Director of IIT-Delhi —reminded his students that “an over-reliance on AI may hinder essential learning outcomes such as critical thinking skills.” Likewise, in IIMs, as a professor has observed with deep anguish, some of the students are asking AI platforms to prepare even field studies.

Indeed, as these otherwise bright students are tempted to surrender their own critical/creative thinking and produce AI-mediated assignments, they deprive themselves of what makes them humane: their subjectivity, their agency, their experiential knowledge, their ‘imperfection’, their hard intellectual labour, and above all, their right to make mistakes. Accept it: Beyond the excessive hype over AI lies a brute fact. It can, as Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari has cautioned us, create a situation in which humans might lose control over their own invention. Isn’t it frightening?

Furthermore, as a teacher, I often ask myself: What do the children of Class III actually need for their cognitive, psychic, aesthetic and intellectual development? Is it AI or something else? Before everything, let us accept that without altering the very meaning of schooling, no technology can arouse the child’s interest in active learning. Let schools not look like prisons; let schools not ‘discipline’ our children in a way that they lose their simplicity, curiosity, wonder and playfulness.

Of course, they ought to learn a bit of elementary mathematics. They need to learn how to read, write and articulate themselves. It is equally important for them to learn how to share, relate to others and work in a group. Let them learn elementary arithmetic through everyday activities that demand addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and some sort of quantification or measurement.

Let them develop their interest in the larger world by playing with the atlas, the globe and the art of storytelling. Let them see, touch, smell and read good/colourful books, and evolve a taste for reading. Let them develop the faculties of observation and reasoning. Let them do things with their hands and legs. And above all, let them play and sharpen their physical/kinetic energy. Let them look at a flower, a tree, a river, and experience wonder and mystery. And this sort of sensitivity, we should not forget, is the highest form of intelligence. I have, therefore, no hesitation in saying that the students of Class III do not need AI. Instead, they need a pedagogic milieu the likes of Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and Jiddu Krishnamurti experimented with.

Think of the burden of knowledge these tender children are asked to carry: English, science, civics, mathematics, computer applications and now AI! Why do we want to rob them of their childhood? Why don’t we realise that if in the formative years, they are allowed to evolve with love and care, and inspired to learn/unlearn without the fear of lagging behind, they will eventually evolve as intellectually awakened, emotionally fulfilled and aesthetically sensitive citizens?

It will not be difficult for them to retain their creative surplus and critical thinking. And as they grow up, it will be possible for them to decide when and how to use AI, and most importantly when to say ‘no’ to it, and assert that the meaning of being humane is to be a master (not a slave) of technology.

Is anybody from the Ministry of Education or the CBSE listening?