Sai Gaddam
Mar 16
One AI Tutor Per Child: Personalized learning is finally here
https://saigaddam.medium.com/one-ai-tuto...re-e3727d84a2d7


My wife and I run a micro-school in Mumbai, India. We recently celebrated its one-year anniversary. Our kids go there along with 15 others. As we like to joke, we are doing small-batch, locally sourced, artisanal education. I also run a tech startup where we are building a product in the learning space. Both of these were born as a result of the pandemic when schools shut down and we saw up close what happens in the name of education.


Having kids sacrifice their childhoods to passively sit in classrooms while one heroic teacher after another attempts to pour knowledge into them is utterly bone-headed. We have known this for a long time now. Many passionate educators, from John Holt to John Taylor Gatto, have written articulately and angrily about this.

We now have lived experience of what a different education can look like. On a daily basis we see how kids can flourish and learn when allowed to actively explore and engage with the world. Worksheets and textbooks are poor substitutes for rich, multi-sensory experiences where learning happens pretty much by default.

Before you think we are anarchist hippies rejecting all systems and institutions outright, I want to add that we are both “well educated” and products of what I’ll call the conveyor belt model of education. I have an undergraduate degree from an IIT, a PhD in neuroscience and I’ve co-authored two non-fiction neuroscience books. Ours is a considered rejection of what many, many parents feel is an evil but necessary treadmill.

Here’s the truth. We do not need this treadmill to learn and be educated. We do not need this conveyor belt to package and transport kids to success in an adult world.

“The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly” — David Ausubel



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