I am now entering one of those difficult phases of life where a decision can’t be postponed anymore. To be honest it was never part of the plan. The deal was only untill having a kid, him getting admitted to the schools to be evaluated and ranked, wasn’t something I had ever planned for. It is quite sudden that the kid is now old enough to enter nursery. Till only yesterday I was running with him after a ball mindlessly. There was no objective or goal we had. The pleasure was in the innocent passing of the ball to one another and the reward was in the chase or the chuckles and the laughs. This gruelling decision came quite suddenly and here I am, muddled looking at the problem which I have to solve as a father and instinctively as a branding professional.
I am absolutely cool with the idea of the kid leaving the nest. The nest needs to be at peace too. In fact, I look forward to those 3-4 hours where, maybe I write the Masala Mindset weekly column, open happiness with a Coca-Cola, read the horoscope along with the Garfield strip. And if nothing allures me, maybe I’ll just jog or do Vipassana for a bit. So homeschooling, however attractive it may sound to the child, has been eliminated by us unanimously.
I am an advocate of AI and digital technology, even in pre-nursery education. It’s not because I am in a rush for him to learn coding and give TedX talks at 11. I support AI-based learning because I believe it can expand imagination, while teacher quality still remains my biggest concern. Under the influence of AI, their judgement and foresight are something that I am concerned about. These will be my biggest decision making factors. AI is prejudiced and biased but I think the teachers could be unconsciously susceptible to this as well. AI in fact, can be monitored, controlled and reviewed. With people, the audit is more complicated. You only discover the bias after it has already shaped a child’s personality.
Meanwhile, I have heard conversations of kids in the park where they discuss AI bots effortlessly. They exchange tips and tricks, the way we used to exchange WWE trading cards. I can see that they are already ahead of their teachers in information acquisition. The teacher’s role therefore, is now going to get more meaningful and expand into deeper faculties. Instilling empathy, sensitization and respect I believe are going to be their biggest responsibilities. The real skill to be taught now is not only curiosity, but learning how to learn.
Digital Technology came very naturally to the kid. Long before he could pick the pencil correctly, he typed out the entire ABCD on my office laptop. He’s now developing a bleak sense of aesthetics with colors and fonts. AI has given wings to the kids’ imagination. In my life the only gift I have loved to give is the book Little Prince by the French author. Apart from it being the most affordable one, it was one which boosted imagination expansion through the beautiful story of a Prince on a planet. Unimaginable, exemplary, yet so empathetic. Now with ChatGPT to his access, the little one asks for a picture of dinosaurs eating gulab jamuns. I envy this childhood. For visual and sensory stimulation, what we got was Champak, and later the Pran comics. These kids are born with digital spoons.
What also leaves me in a quagmire is that I do not know what career progressions there will be as he grows and which school wins hands down in holistic and multi-faceted development. Medical science will change, engineering will change, perhaps construction and real estate changes too with 3D Printing becoming accessible. Manufacturing, hospitality-tourism and agriculture will be still there but its processes would have changed. What will become digital but not change entirely will be judiciary, administration, culinary, sports and entertainment. I don’t even want to think about what will happen to art. I love my music, books and cinema (mostly English or Malayalam movies). I can’t imagine anyone copying Mark Twain, or Vikram Seth or Mario Puzo so easily. Probably, in the future what’s authentic will become an industry of collectibles. Like children, teachers are also growing in this age and therefore guiding on what skill to emphasize becomes a deep question. Now we are asking whether the school can prepare a child for a world nobody can describe properly.
So far we have progressed to finding a school that provides AI enriched holistic skill development so the child finds it easy to manoeuvre his learning path. It is now during the school selection stage where the brand marketer in me wakes up. I open not the prospectus or the curriculum but the brand’s owned media handles. And when I see the investment in social media management, I can foresee the school’s intent versus positioning. I totally understand visuals to be an important part of the funnel yet content reveals a lot about the school. The management and leadership that shows cringe, vanity and uses children as props is what I get wary of. Content that’s about research, curriculum, compassion, and innovation is what I want to know to be reassured.
I think our search for the school will go on for a bit. It’s one of the most critical decisions, more difficult than deciding on getting married or becoming a parent itself. As anxious parents we seek a school that brings him back curious, confident, kinder and still imaginative enough to look for dinosaurs eating gulab jamuns.
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