In the international school world, "Personalised Learning" is the golden ticket. The idea is that every student should have a curriculum tailored exactly to their pace and ability. With AI, this is now possible. But lately, as I watch my students in Shanghai each plug into their own individualised "learning pathways," I’ve started to wonder if we’re accidentally destroying the community that makes a school a school.
The Broad Debate
The debate usually pits the "Silicon Valley" types—who think education is just a series of skills to be "unlocked"—against the "Traditionalists" who think there is a core body of knowledge everyone should learn together. Efficiency vs. Cohesion. Individual mastery vs. Shared culture.
What the Thinkers Say
The polite consensus—the "Rory and Alastair" vibe—is that we can have it both ways through "blended learning." They assume that as long as the outcomes are good, the social fragmentation doesn't matter.
But this ignores the truth of how we live. If children grow up only ever learning at their own pace and according to their own interests, are we preparing them for a world that demands compromise? As someone who values family and community before the State, I worry that we're training children to be consumers of content rather than members of a society. We are treating the "State-provided" education as a personal gym membership, rather than a shared foundation.
My View
My view is that personalisation is a brilliant tool for skills, but a disaster for culture. We should use AI to personalise things like maths drills—the mechanical stuff. But we should never personalise the "humanities." A class should read the same book, look at the same history, and debate the same ideas. We need to preserve the classroom as a place of "shared gravity." Kindness in teaching isn't just about "meeting a child where they are"; it's about inviting them into a world they didn't know existed.
Skills vs. Soul
The Efficiency of Personalised Skills
In an average classroom, a third of the kids are bored and a third are lost. For things like coding or arithmetic, that's a waste of life. This is where personalisation is a dream. It lets the struggling student get the practice they need without being embarrassed. Like a junior lawyer in an M&A room, you need to master the basics at your own pace before you can join the main debate.
The Necessity of Shared Experience
But imagine a history lesson where every student is reading a different article tailored to their "interest." We would have 30 individuals, but no class. Education isn't just about "learning things"; it's about learning to be part of an "us." If we don't all struggle with the same difficult text together—whether it's Hamlet or a news report from The Economist—we lose the shared frame of reference that allows us to be a community.
What Happens Next?
If you're a parent or a teacher, try to draw a clear line:
- Personalise the Tools: Use adaptive platforms for the "drills"—maths, languages, vocab. This is where the machine wins.
- Standardise the Ideas: Keep the whole-class novel and the group science project. Force the kids to engage with the same material at the same time.
- Bring back the Debate: The most "personalised" thing you can do for a student is to listen to their individual opinion about a shared problem.
For schools: Don't let the tech gurus convince you that a room full of children with headphones on is a "modern classroom." It’s a call centre. Keep the personalised pathways for home, and keep the classroom for the shared, messy work of learning together.