Article by Dr Harilal Bhaskar.

Generative technologies have not just entered education—they have unsettled its very foundations. For the first time, students share the classroom with systems that can draft essays, solve equations, and generate ideas faster than most of us. This is no longer about adding a digital layer to pedagogy. It is about facing a rupture that questions the very purpose of schooling.

Yet our institutions cling to business as usual. A new elective here, a coding bootcamp there, perhaps a module on digital literacy. Meanwhile, the core remains unchanged: memory-heavy exams, standardized problem sets, and essays easily outsourced to machines. The silence from policymakers is not prudence; it is paralysis.

Having worked across education, technology, and strategy for half a century, I can say this moment is unlike previous disruptions. When calculators entered classrooms, we redesigned math curricula but did not abandon proof. When the internet arrived, we taught search literacy but still valued synthesis. But now, the machine is no longer a tool at the edge—it sits at the center, mimicking thought itself. This shift is not incremental; it is existential.

The issue is not how to “use” new tools in class, but how to defend what is distinctively human in a world of simulation. If machines outpace us in recall, precision, and calculation, then education must shift its center of gravity. The task ahead is to nurture judgment, humility, responsibility, and imagination—the qualities no dataset can replicate. Students must learn to own not only what they know, but why they know it, and to engage with ambiguity where machines only compute.

This demands a break from the rituals of the past. Polished essays no longer prove thought. Problem sets no longer prove mastery. Assessment must move to formats that cannot be automated: live oral defenses that test reasoning under pressure, collaborative projects that require negotiation, reflective journals that expose ethical positioning. These are not diluted standards; they are rigor redefined for a new age.

Integrity, too, requires new protocols. Just as citations ground academic honesty, disclosure of technological assistance must become standard. Learners should not be punished for drawing on tools, but they must be trained to explain when and how they did so. Responsibility now lies not in avoiding machines, but in showing one’s stance toward them.

Educators themselves must change. Authority can no longer rest on information delivery when information is endlessly generated. Their role is to hold space for dialogue, to mentor through moral uncertainty, to cultivate discernment. Teaching becomes less about providing answers and more about shaping wisdom.

There is also a danger in surrendering every corner of learning to technology. Unmediated human experience matters. Silence, slowness, and disconnection are not indulgences—they are necessities. As exercise strengthens the body, contemplation strengthens the mind. Without such spaces, learning risks shrinking into management of tools rather than pursuit of understanding.

Research must also evolve. Technical novelty, once the hallmark of scholarship, is increasingly within machine reach. What scholars bring to the table is interpretive depth—the worldviews, assumptions, and ethical imagination that shape their contributions. Oral defenses should test not only methodological rigor but also awareness of these undercurrents.

Here lies a strategic warning drawn from decades of advising governments and industries: the infrastructure of education itself is at risk of capture. If classrooms depend on platforms controlled by corporations accountable only to shareholders, education becomes hostage to remote priorities. Nations must build open, culturally rooted systems that reflect local values. They must also regulate or reject tools that undermine the principles of human learning.

Policymakers must also recognize that the future of education is a matter of competitiveness. Countries that merely import learning technologies without shaping them will find their youth educated in someone else’s worldview. In my years of strategy work, I have seen how misplaced dependencies erode sovereignty. Education cannot be left to market forces alone; it requires deliberate national design.

Yet this is not a task for single nations alone. Education is at a global inflection point. Governments, universities, technologists, and indigenous knowledge keepers must forge a new compact—one that defines the role of machines while protecting the sanctity of human inquiry. Without such alignment, we risk creating a fractured world where learning is dictated by algorithms optimized for profit, not wisdom.

The stakes are not just curricular; they are civilizational. What kind of humanity do we want to cultivate? Do we wish to produce generations trained to mimic machines, or individuals capable of transcending them? The answer will define not only our classrooms but our democracies, our economies, and our moral horizons.

The choice could not be sharper. Education may drift into becoming a hollow annex to machine intelligence, or it can stand as the last stronghold of judgment, humility, and freedom. If we choose the latter, schools and universities will not merely endure disruption; they will awaken a deeper form of learning—one that stretches beyond automation.

This is not reform. It is redefinition. The question is urgent: will education train us to think like machines, or dare to shape humans capable of thinking beyond them?

The author Dr Harilal Bhaskar is the COO and National Coordinator of I-STEM.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETEDUCATION does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETEDUCATION will not be responsible for any damage caused to any person or organisation directly or indirectly.