The curriculum was full, the timetable was tight. The exam board had expectations. So we moved on.
That moment stayed with me. Not because it was rare, but because it was routine. The system does not punish curiosity directly; it simply does not make room for it.
We speak of preparing the young for the future, but whose future and at what cost?
A.I. promises efficiency, personalised learning, automated feedback. Beneath those promises lies a deeper question: what happens when we outsource judgment? When empathy becomes optional? When creativity is filtered through predictive models?
The danger is not the technology. It is the silence that surrounds it.
We are not witnessing a revolution. We are witnessing quiet compliance, a civic drift toward mechanised hope. The system does not lie. It measures. Attendance, attainment, behaviour, progress: each metric claims objectivity and erases context.
A student arrives late because they care for a sibling. The register marks them absent, the system flags concern and the intervention begins.
A student submits work that is raw, personal and unstructured. The rubric penalises and the grade falls. The feedback suggests conformity.
We do not ask what is happening at the time; we ask what is missing. We do not ask who they are; we ask what they scored.
AI now accelerates this process: faster grading, predictive analytics, behavioural forecasting. What happens when the system becomes too efficient to notice harm or the individual?
Judgement is not a flaw; it is a civic act. To judge is to witness and to hold complexity and to resist automation in light of wisdom.
We are losing judgement not because AI replaces it but because we no longer trust ourselves to exercise it. Human intelligence is not disappearing; it is being displaced. Memory is stored externally, judgement is deferred to systems and creativity is shaped by templates. This is not a collapse; it is gradual substitution.
AI does not erase human thought; it replaces the need to engage with it. The few of us who observe may record this loss for those who follow, not to reject change but to clarify what was surrendered. One question remains plain: will it be too late to reset?
