There has always been an unspoken prejudice adults carry about children: how can they be tired? Childhood, we assume, is synonymous with energy. Fatigue, in our understanding, belongs to the body—earned through labour, age, or responsibility—and not to young minds. And yet, what we are witnessing in classrooms today quietly unsettles that belief. When Pauses Disappeared There was a time when a child’s day had a natural rhythm: school, play, homework, rest. There were pauses b

In many classrooms today, information moves faster than ever before. Students can search for summaries, generate explanations through AI tools, and skim through large amounts of digital content within minutes. But the dilemma is that this focus on speed is changing how students engage with texts. Even for exams, they often rely on prompts as if they were cheat codes. Increasingly, educators are noticing a shift from slow, reflective reading to quick scanning for key points. W

“A child is a beautiful creation of God.” To provide a successful life with values to a child, knowledge is a great tool. A supportive education environment that prioritises emotional safety and active engagement leads to academic success and resilience. Being non-judgemental is the key to positive learning. Children learn best in low-stakes, supportive environments that boost confidence, reduce anxiety, and encourage emotional connection—such as reading to non-judgemental an

Over the past few months, as I have stepped into a global education media leadership role with the BRICS Educational Film & Media Association, I have found myself in conversations across countries, systems and contexts. The dominant narrative everywhere is familiar. Artificial intelligence, digital platforms, scale, access and personalisation continue to shape the discourse. And yet, the most powerful learning moments I encounter are not digital. They are human. A student fin

Understanding isn’t just absorbing information, it's taking what a student can read, see, or does and actually make sense of it. It’s in the mental filter of a student, if not attentive or interesting, the information just bounces o. But if a student ponders sufficiently long enough, processes the information and turns that raw data into actual knowledge, which is understanding. True understanding is a continuous process of active engagement, reflection, and connecting concep

“My hope and wish is that one day, formal education will pay attention to what I call education of the heart, just as we take for granted the need to acquire proficiency in the basic academic subjects.” — His Holiness the Dalai Lama One in five people feel lonely on a planet of 8.3 billion, according to the Gallup Poll (2024). Can we really afford to rely solely on results like SAT, Gaokao, IIT-JEE, or GCSEs to gauge the effectiveness of a school? Learners today constantly gr

Ten years ago, the biggest technology concern in schools was whether smartphones were becoming too much of a distraction. Today, we are grappling with something far more complex—intelligent systems making decisions about students’ futures, often without anyone fully understanding how or why. The rise of Agentic AI - these self-directed systems that can think through problems, take action, and learn as they go – forces us to rethink what teaching even means anymore. It's not t

In the contemporary educational landscape, there is a pervasive drift toward “educational consumerism.” It is a framework where schools are viewed as service providers and parents as clients, with a child’s development treated as a commodity measured by the cold metrics of assessments and report cards. However, after several years in education, one realises that the most profound growth in a child doesn’t occur in the isolation of a classroom. It happens through a strong, sus

Something counterintuitive is happening at college gates across India. Students who accumulated the strongest academic records in their schools are, in disproportionate numbers, the ones who struggle most sharply in the opening months of higher education. The explanation is not that these students are less capable than they appeared. It is that the capabilities school rewarded—memorising content, performing reliably under examination conditions, following clearly marked proce

In an education landscape often driven by speed and scale, Yatharth Gautam stands out for choosing pause, reflection, and responsibility. His journey traces an evolution from corporate precision to purpose-led leadership, where the true measure of success lies beyond metrics—in the everyday realities of schools and learners. Mentor Magazine features his journey in education, his deepening engagement with learning spaces to steward impact, and a perspective that balances scale