ELEVATING TEACHERS FOR INDIA'S AMRIT KAAL

Education 2047 #Blog 12 (17 APR 2023)

 

Swami Vivekananda believed that education is the manifestation of perfection already in men and regretted that the system of education then, did not enable a person to stand on his own feet, nor did it teach him self-confidence and self-respect. He also remarked that, "No one can teach anybody. The teacher spoils everything by thinking that he is teaching. Thus Vedanta says that within man is all knowledge—even in a boy it is so—and it requires only an awakening, and that much is the work of a teacher. We have to do only so much for the boys that they may learn to apply their own intellect to the proper use of their hands, legs, ears, eyes, etc., and finally everything will become easy." [https://vivekavani.com/priya-nath-sinha/]. Swami Vivekanand’s observation on the system of education, strikingly remains valid even after a century and needs to change in our Amrit Kaal (time span till 2047, the centenary of India’s Independence).

For centuries together, to acquire education one had to walk up to an academic institution; prove the capability of a worthy recipient; pick up information, knowledge & skills; take the examinations and get acknowledged for the degree of knowledge acquired. The entire process has been centered around knowledge, managed by educational administrators and any desired/ necessitated change in the system has to come from within. This is how educational systems have functioned for most part in the history.

For the industrial society that demanded conformist or instructivist education, the teacher was trained to present himself as one who has to be always be right, and always know the right answer- source of which was identified and fixed. Interestingly, we got such teachers after the educational system was rebooted to cater to the colonial requirements and the English succeeded in it. In the pre-industrialized or pre-colonized India, we had Gurukul system of education prevalent for thousands of years. It was a system of education where the teacher (Guru) lived with his students (Shishya) in an ashram-like environment. The teacher's role was not just to impart knowledge but to also serve as a mentor and guide to the students. The teaching was conducted in a highly personalized manner, with the teacher customizing the teaching to the needs of each student. The students were expected to follow strict rules of conduct and show reverence and respect to the teacher. In return, the teacher was expected to provide guidance and support to the students throughout their lives.

As one can find in the Indian literature, there were six type of teachers: Adhyapak (transmitter of information); Upadhyay (one giving knowledge); Acharya (who imparts skills), Pandit (facilitating deep insight into a subject), Drishta (having visionary view on a subject and teaching learner to think in that manner) or Guru (for awakening the wisdom in the learner). Quite possibly, each teacher was an admixture of all six, functioning differentially to each student/ disciple. Or may be, all teachers started as Adhyapak and very few could move up progressively to the next level and took one role out of the six. Whatever it be, it is clear that the teacher today as we understand is not the Guru of those times, and rightly so, because of the expectations of a conformist industrial society that kept them operative at lower levels.

From an era when teachers and books were the only source of knowledge to students, we are into the times when AI is aiding learners in adaptive and personalized learning, utilizing sources of knowledge that are completely democratized. Education is evolving from learners proving the retention of knowledge in the head to get a degree, to demonstrating capability of using head, heart and hands, for doing something innovative or meeting an unmet need. Clearly, learner-centric education with focus on experiential learning is how it is shaping and it makes a lot of sense to let students be in the command of learning (learner autonomy) with teachers beside- reincarnated as their mentors/ counselors/ pathfinders/ navigators, as it was in the pre-industrialized India and also fore-scripted as renewed role of teacher by Technology Vision 2035 Roadmap on Education drawn by TIFAC.

 

At the nucleus of academic institutions hitherto, has been knowledge which in the internet age has fissioned and is now available outside also; the knowledge can be accessed by anyone- anytime, anywhere and in any language. The role of physical teachers (Adhyapak and Upadhyay in the present system) is going to the machines, as evident from the fact that online learning happens from the very first row of the classrooms! The change in information technology, the rate of change of technology and rate of accumulation of knowledge and the ability to store and transport information is all going to make teachers (Adhyapak and Upadhyay) irrelevant, more so for conventional teaching of subjects in our schools, colleges and universities. 

The learners will look for information/ knowledge/ resources independently and work on to create new resources (knowledge/ technology/ products) and opportunities (including jobs) and may or may not always need a teacher. Resources/ opportunities so created, knowledge about them and expertise acquired in the process will get packed as 'experience' which will be the new currency in the academic institutions, replacing 'knowledge'. So it will not be the knowledge alone which will get into the storehouse but also experiences. People will be prompted to share them and there will be a huge repository of experiences which they would access anywhere, anytime and anyone, obviating the need to store knowledge in our heads by undertaking years of education. The whole idea of teaching as corrective, restrictive, prescriptive and facilitative education that it is currently, will be losing its relevance due to axial shift from teacher-centric to learner-centric education system.

Digital learners no longer commit information to their memory, and have stopped taking notes, making mnemonics, doodling etc commonly done when teaching was in Adhyapak/ Upadhyay mode. It will be befitting and timely that teachers understand that their roles are being transformed from that of the fountain of knowledge to a coach or mentor, helping to guide the students through individualized learning pathways; identifying relevant learning resources; creating collaborative learning opportunities; providing insight and support during formal class time and outside of the designated 40-minute instruction period. In a learner-centred dispensation, teachers actually have to evolve to be seen as a learner by learners; more creative than students to inspire and motivate them. Teachers have to produce life-long learners, and therefore, need to be lifelong learners and acquirers of first hand experience themselves. 

With the rapidly changing educational landscape, and India's quest to acquire intellectual prowess, regain its share in the global GDP (that it commanded before getting colonized) and prepare itself for its Amrit Kaal, the teacher needs to be reinvented and repurposed, as suggested in the blog earlier. This means that their training also needs to be restructured- should be more focused on preparing teachers who know how to create a learning environment and not facilitators (of passing of students from one semester to another, from one year to the other). Training has to be for preparing Gurus (not Adhyapak or Upadhyay) and being mindful that not everyone can actually become one; but targeting to become Gurus can certainly lead to Acharya, Pandit or Drishta who have a decisive role to play in our Amrit Kaal. This is also warranted by the 'new-age learning' enunciated by our visionary Prime Minister in the wake of National Educational Policy 2020, encouraging the learners to- engage, explore, experience, express and excel.

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Author is an Adviser with All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) on deputation from Technology Information, Forecasting & Assessment Council (TIFAC).

 

Views are personal.

 

Feedback appreciated in the comment box below. 👍

Previous blogs

Reengineering Educational Systems for Maximizing Learning

'Rubricating' Education for Better Learning Outcomes

Indiscipline in Disciplines for Multidisciplinary Education!

Re'class'ification of Learning for the New Normal

Reconfiguring Education as 'APP' Learning

Rejigging Universities with a COVID moment

Reimagining Engineering Education for 'Techcelerating' Times

Uprighting STEM Education with 7x24 Labs 

Dismantling Macaulay's Schools with 'Online' Support

Moving Towards Education Without Examinations

Disruptive Technologies in Education and Challenges in its Governance

MEMORISATION IS NOT LEARNING

 

Education 2047 #Blog 59 (22 APR 2026) 

 

Memorisation Is Not Learning.

It Is Skating Over It.

 

 

 

For over a century, formal education has followed a four-beat sequence: encounter, memorise, reproduce, advance. Repeat across subjects, semesters, and years. The rhythm sounds purposeful. It produces transcripts. It fills classrooms. And it accomplishes something quite precise: it allows students to skate over knowledge rather than absorb it.

AI has now exposed this with brutal clarity. Because AI can perform the memorise step and the reproduce step faster, more accurately, and with far less effort than any student. What remains when those two steps are stripped away?

That question is not a threat. It is the most important educational question of our time.

 

The Rhythm That Actually Works

In the AI age, the productive learning sequence is different: encounter, deliberate, reflect, advance.

The difference is not cosmetic. It is structural. Each beat serves a different function, and each represents a different theory of what learning is for.

Encounter is the first contact with new information — a concept, a problem, a phenomenon. Both sequences begin here. But the paths diverge immediately.

In the traditional sequence, the response to encounter is memorisation — the attempt to fix knowledge in retrievable form before it escapes. The anxiety underlying this step is revealing: we do not trust the learner's mind to do anything useful with knowledge unless it is first locked in place.

In the AI-age sequence, the response to encounter is deliberation. Not passive waiting — purposeful suspension. The learner sits with the knowledge before deciding what to do with it. This is where discomfort becomes productive. Uncertainty is not resolved; it is inhabited.

Reflect is where the real work happens. What does this connect to? Where does it break down? What question does it open that I did not have before? Reflection does not consolidate knowledge. It transforms it. What survives this step has been genuinely metabolised — it is now part of how the learner sees, not merely what the learner stores.

Advance is then earned, not assumed. The learner moves forward because they are ready, not because the timetable says so.

 

Five Structural Differences

The contrast between the two rhythms is not merely a matter of pacing. It runs through every dimension of what we mean by learning.

 

Direction.  The traditional sequence moves forward — coverage drives it, syllabus completion measures it. The AI-age sequence moves inward before moving forward. One optimises for the calendar. The other optimises for transformation.

 

Forgetting.  Traditional education treats forgetting as failure — hence the memorisation step, designed to prevent it. AI-age learning treats forgetting as signal. What survives the deliberate-reflect cycle has been genuinely metabolised. What does not survive was never truly learned. Credentials follow the logic of the OTP — valid at issuance, expiring rapidly. Memorised knowledge is a one-time password. Reflected knowledge is a master key.

 

Who controls the clock.  Traditional rhythm is externally timed — by the teacher, the timetable, the examination date. The learner has no authority over pace. AI-age rhythm is internally timed. The learner decides when the pause is sufficient, when reflection is complete. This is not indiscipline. It is the shift from pedagogy to heutagogy — from taught learning to self-determined learning.

 

The function of uncertainty.  Traditional education minimises uncertainty at each step. There is a right answer; find it; move on. AI-age learning sustains uncertainty through the reflect phase. The discomfort of not-yet-knowing is not a bug to be fixed. It is the precise condition under which thinking actually occurs. Remove it, and you remove the learning.

 

The role of basics.  Traditional education requires memorisation of basics before encounter with problems — just-in-case loading, prescribed in advance. AI-age learning pulls basics into the reflect step as needed — just-in-time, as fuel rather than foundation. Basics are not a prerequisite. They are a resource. The problem comes first; the basics follow, drawn in by the pull of genuine inquiry.

 

Where AI Cannot Go

The human-AI boundary in this framework is not arbitrary. It is structural.

In the traditional sequence — encounter, memorise, reproduce, advance — AI disrupts the second and third beats entirely. It memorises everything. It reproduces flawlessly. The human learner, competing on those terms, is outmatched by definition.

But in the AI-age sequence, the map changes. AI can support the know step — it is an extraordinary tool for encounter, for curating the first exposure to a problem or concept. AI can support the move step — it can confirm readiness, suggest the next encounter, personalise the path forward.

The pause and the reflect steps are irreducibly human.

Not because AI cannot process information during those phases. But because the pause is not information processing. It is the suspension of processing — the deliberate withholding of the next input until the current one has been inhabited. And reflection is not retrieval. It is the restructuring of how one sees. It is the moment when a learner's questions change — not just their answers.

This is where the Pandit, the Drishta, and the Guru live in the ancient Gurukul hierarchy. Not in the transmission of content — that is the domain of Adhyapak, Upadhyay, Acharya, all of which AI now performs. But in the cultivation of the reflective capacity itself: the ability to sit with uncertainty, to ask better questions, to see what others have not yet seen.

 

The Assessment Implication

If the most important beat in the learning sequence is reflect, then the most important thing to assess is what happened during reflection.

But that is precisely what our current system does not assess. Examinations measure the regurgitate step. They confirm that memorisation occurred. They tell us very little about whether the learner's questions have changed, whether their seeing has deepened, whether they have genuinely inhabited the knowledge or merely stored it.

The shift that follows is direct: move the weight of evaluation from answers to questions. What a learner asks after encountering a concept is a far more reliable signal of learning than what they can recall about it.

The Verdict

The traditional sequence produced graduates. The AI-age sequence must produce learners.

A graduate is someone who has moved through a curriculum. A learner is someone who has been changed by it.

The difference is not intelligence. It is not effort. It is rhythm. And the pause — the deliberate, uncomfortable, generative pause — is the beat that makes all the difference.

Education that removes the pause to make room for more content is not efficient. It is skating. Fast, impressive, and entirely without depth.

 

 

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About the author 

Dr. Neeraj Saxena is Pro-Chancellor, JIS University, Kolkata, and a former Scientist at TIFAC and Adviser at AICTE, Government of India. He writes on higher education transformation, AI, and India's cognitive future.