6 min readNov 13, 2026 06:12 PM IST First published on: Nov 13, 2026 at 06:12 PM ISTWho is a child? The question was never easy to answer, partly because the term “child” is used in so many ways. In India, it applies to grown-up adults as well as real children. College and university teachers commonly refer to their students as “bachche”. In the meanwhile, real children and their education are routinely neglected and poorly planned. Neglect takes many forms, ranging from early indoctrination to ill-conceived imposition of complex items of knowledge and devices. The smartphone is one such device. Mothers use it as a babysitter and education policymakers treat it as a learning tool. Its detrimental impact on children’s intellectual development is no longer a matter of debate, yet governments in many countries are still reluctant to recognise the problem. Some governments have now taken belated, radical steps to ban the smartphone and related digital devices in elementary schools. Neither the central nor state governments in our country have woken up to notice the mounting evidence available to stop the digital avalanche outside elementary school gates.Little surprise, therefore, that one doesn’t meet children unscarred by digital exposure. I met one such child during a recent train ride. I had a long conversation with this UKG (upper kindergarten) child about life and literature. She was interested in words, poetry, and signs of ageing. She was equally fluent in Hindi and English. She enjoyed listening to some old Hindi nursery rhymes I knew and recited some new ones that I had not heard before. And there were the usual English rhymes as well. She also explained how the three sections of her kindergarten are organised. One thing was clear: She had no interest in the smartphone her mother was busy with. Apparently, her teachers at the Convent of Jesus and Mary had protected her from the phone, its treasure trove of stories, visuals and rhymes.AdvertisementA couple of years ago I endured the difficult company of a smaller child who, after a protracted and noisy back and forth, prevailed upon her father to let her listen to a long story on his phone in return for agreeing to sleep. By now it was close to midnight, and I too had no choice but to listen to the story. It was about two boats, one very slow and the other very fast. Those in the latter had to wait at the shore for the other one to arrive, and as they waited, a storm forced them to enter and get lost in a nearby jungle. The loud, inane story, accompanied by visuals, went on and on, with nothing but coincidence to drive the tormented plot to its inconsequential end. Alas, instead of putting the child to sleep, it only provoked further demands for a sequel, this time with thumping music.Also Read | Notes from an empty office after DiwaliVideo devices and apps have turned childhood and pedagogic norms upside down. In Britain, the first flush of digital enthusiasm led the authorities to make reading apps compulsory. Fifteen years later, teachers are realising how wrong it was to deprive children of real books. Many schools are reverting to paper and pencil-based literacy and numeracy. This reversal of policy is not easy to pursue. For one thing, the promise of digitally assisted pedagogy increased class size and reduced teaching staff. Attention deficit is common among children brought up on app-based learning and AI-assisted marking of homework. The familiar divide between elites and the ordinary middle class is showing signs of getting wider. The latter are hooked to e-reading, and the state isn’t yet ready to accept that its investment in digital equipping of schools has proved counterproductive.Our story is likely to be similar. In fact, both public and private investment in e-equipping of elementary schools is growing unabated. The perception that online teaching is a substitute for real teaching took root during the pandemic years. Uprooting this perception is hard. In Delhi, for example, an increase in air pollution leads to online learning. The quality of that learning is nobody’s concern. Even in Kendriya Vidyalayas, the maximum use of e-enabled teaching and testing has been on the rise. Contrary to the common perception and belief, e-pedagogy at early stages interferes with children’s intellectual growth and makes teaching more difficult in higher grades. The widespread belief that starting early is good in every sphere of knowledge has no basis whatsoever. It is simply a middle-class superstition shared by many administrators and policy makers. They don’t want to recognise that if teacher engagement is mediated by digital devices in the early years, it is likely to muzzle rather than enhance children’s intellectual and emotional development.AdvertisementEarly introduction to AI represents the biggest threat of misplaced policy. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to introduce it in Grade III. Not to be left behind, Punjab wants children to learn AI from Grade I onwards. And there are schools already using AI equipment in nursery and kindergarten. This spectre brooks no debate or discussion. It is integral to the catch-up syndrome that has been driving children’s upbringing in urban middle classes and public policy. No one knows how to tame this gung-ho attitude. One might have expected child-right groups and institutions like the National Commission for the Protection of Children’s Rights (NCPCR) to take suo moto steps to scaffold small children against digital invasion. The new technologies may be useful for adults, but childhood needs a protective umbrella to sustain sanity and spontaneity. The little UKG girl who taught me new nursery rhymes in Hindi sang several classic English rhymes and drew a picture with my pen on a scrap of paper. It was obvious that her teachers have resisted the pressure we see all around to push children into screen flipping in order to be entertained in digital solitude.The writer is former director, National Council of Educational Research and Training