Al and school students

The impact of AI on school education in India is likely to widen existing gaps among students, particularly those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This is a critical consideration that is often neglected in discussions about AI expansion, especially in the children’s learning space.

For students with access to AI and the ability to ask the right questions, it can become a valuable tool, sometimes even surpassing the best teacher.

However, access to such tools and opportunities, which involves a financial and social cost, is easier for students from private elite schools than those from government schools. Furthermore, within government schools, there are significant variations. For example, a student in a remote government school in Bihar will have a vastly different experience compared to a student in a government school in Mumbai.

When used intelligently and prudently, Artificial Intelligence has the potential to revolutionise school education in the country. It can enhance learning and serve as an extended academic resource for teachers.

It may be useful to recall efforts made in the early 1990s to bring quality learning through pan-India projects like the Department of Primary Education Programme and its predecessor, the School System Improvement Act. Both these quality intervention projects became overly focused on teaching teachers how to teach, becoming so mechanical that trainers often communicated beyond the immediate comprehension and needs of teachers. For instance, university-trained resource persons were found in debates with teachers on whether language evolved or was innate to humans, or whether mathematics is concrete or abstract.

While these discussions sometimes sparked interest in teachers, they ultimately did not compensate for their missing knowledge to improve classroom teaching. Terms like ‘concept learning’ were often rather abstract to explain and equally difficult to comprehend. Resource persons sometimes suffered from the ‘curse of knowledge’ as they forgot about the time they had taken to comprehend these ideas, which they wanted teachers to know and use within a few days of training. Moreover, teachers were left alone to build on what was transferred to them in the training without support to clarify their doubts.

Artificial Intelligence with chat capabilities could address these gaps, provided teachers learn to ask the right questions. Questions that help in the process of arriving at an answer and questions that explain the building blocks of knowledge.

For AI to deliver on universal education, there is a monumental task ahead.

prasoon68@icloud.com