The promise of AI is often framed in terms of productivity, innovation and accelerated growth. Its most meaningful possibility may be simpler: a childhood restored to joy.

As things stand, most children spend their most formative years in a system that blunts their distinctive edges on a daily basis and tries to force them all into the same mould. It’s a 12-year sentence of hard labour.

Our children rise at dawn and travel long distances bearing large burdens (physical and metaphorical), copy notes they barely understand (and care about less each year), return home exhausted, rote-learn or rote-draw or rote-create, and wake up to repeat the cycle all over again. For many, this becomes a life of quiet desperation, and then there is the recurring strain of tests and entrance exams.

India has spent years trying to improve its school systems. Governments and private bodies have redesigned classrooms, reworked syllabi, toyed with the idea of elective courses and school-level internships. Some have made some progress. But too many children still sit in joyless rooms where learning is both rushed and narrow.

Most frustratingly, they emerge, at the end of their schooling years, neither more of who they were, nor more of what the world wants them to be.

Surveys show that about 54% of Class 8 students cannot solve Class 4 math problems. Employers lament, decade after decade, that college graduates are not job-ready, not even when it comes to soft skills such as communication and basic reasoning.

This isn’t surprising. In classrooms, teachers aren’t just overburdened, they are taught to address a hypothetical average, to the detriment of all children outside that narrow zone. Such a system converts early confusion into long-term disengagement.

And yet, defiant joy shines through. A child who struggles with reading grins when she gets a line right. A boy weighted down by rote-learning lights up when asked what he thinks, instead of what he remembers.

Wave after wave of technology has promised to foster this sense of exuberance and curiosity. Could AI be the wave that makes it work?

PROMPT LEARNING

Its explosive possibilities could do real damage, of course.

Artificial intelligence threatens to weaken already weak attention spans, impair reasoning and diligence. Already, it is causing a kind of cognitive debt, as adults and children alike outsource thought to these new machines. Studies are showing that, within months, this can lead to changes in reasoning, communication, even brain activity. (Look out for more on this in upcoming editions of Wknd.)

But use it right, align the hoops, and AI could place a whole new world within our grasp. Digital tutors could personalise learning by changing the unit of instruction from the classroom to the child, offering every young learner the chance to ask every question they have, free of embarrassment. Think of what a game-changer this could be.

A struggling reader or a speaker of a different language could build confidence word by word, with help from a system designed to identify where they struggle and what teaching approaches they respond to best. AI assistants could adjust pace, difficulty, language and assessment in real time.

A child could have a concept explained again, and then again with a different metaphor. Another could move faster instead of waiting.

None of this replaces the teacher. The classroom becomes less about reading from a textbook and more about engaging with and responding to children, as they learn and evolve. Teachers could focus on the vital human element of engagement: talking, encouraging, challenging, connecting.

Here is the tantalising possibility: AI not as a techno shortcut but as the thing that gives wings to each young mind.

The tools are becoming available, but we still need to test them, and work out policies that both enable and protect. There will be no easy or quick route to AI-assisted teaching and AI-enabled learning.

What is certain is that this opportunity will be lost if AI is introduced as one more check-off-that-box exercise of cursory new labs and premature curricula. If artificial intelligence is to help rebuild India’s classrooms, teachers would need to be the primary levers of change. Parents would also need to be recruited and educated on how to serve as steady guardrails, reinforcing effort, integrity and balance.

That way we could give children what they want, and need. Because an eight-year-old doesn’t care that her school has a room full of new machines. She is waiting for someone to explain fractions in a way that makes her grin.

Her happy childhood shouldn’t be an afterthought. It can be the foundation that makes real learning possible.

(Kashyap Kompella is a tech industry analyst and author of two books on AI. The views expressed are personal)