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This week:
A.I., Social Mobility and Education
Inheritocracy on the radio and press
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When it comes to technological innovation, it’s always worth looking not at what Silicon Valley is selling publicly but what it is privately prioritising for its own children. Steve Jobs famously never gave his kids iPads. Bill Gates capped screen time and refused phones for his early-teens. But perhaps more revealing is not what individual tech giants do at home, but the kind of schooling popular in the Valley. The high concentration of Montessori nurseries and alternative education is no accident. At the Waldorf School in Los Altos for example, teachers and children use chalkboards and pencils, and there’s a deliberate delay in introducing tech. The focus is on creativity, concentration, and real-world interaction.
So why are those who invent our digital tools so reluctant to let their own kids near them?
Thanks to Jonathan Haidt, more of us parents are confronting the role of smartphones in childhood, but what about screens in schools? EdTech resources have been around for decades (anyone remember Typing Tutor?), but exploded during Covid, with Big Tech now deeply embedded in classrooms. Gamification is often the dominant mode.
I heard of one pupil winning the French prize at school by trouncing the online leaderboard on the vocab app. When he went to France that summer, he froze. He struggled to order a croissant. It’s one thing to master the game of learning French, but it is very different from mastering the language itself.
There’s certainly value in EdTech tools, especially for reinforcement of learning, but many are already questioning this ‘slot machine’ approach of points and prizes, which directly works on the ‘variable reward’ feedback loop in our brains on which so much addictive tech interaction is based. Are we already in danger of turning learning into Candy Crush?
Covid exposed the digital divide brutally: kids learning via mobile phones, weak 3G, no laptops - all while private schools seamlessly moved online. But there’s a deeper class-tech divide that has been brewing for years.
Back in 2017, a U.S. survey found that under‑8s from low-income families averaged 3.5 hours of daily screen time, compared to 2.5 hours for middle-income peers, and just 1.75 hours for children in high-income households. Yes, wealthier families fund alternatives to screen time and are enforcing stricter limits on exposure, even as they’re surrounded by devices.
And now we are seeing a similar regulation in the elite education system. Private schools are not waiting for legislation on the banning of smartphones to implement restrictions; many are already rethinking their digital strategies and re-emphasising concentration, connection, and the value of an analogue education. Meanwhile, children in underfunded schools may soon be more and more reliant on screen-led learning.
This is the new frontier of inequality: not who has access to tech, but who has to depend on it.
AI is now being sold as the next big educational leveller and great opportunity. OpenAI recently announced a five-year initiative with the American Federation of Teachers to train 400,000 K-12 educators to integrate AI into their teaching. Politicians have voiced a positive tone too. Back in 2023, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called AI “so powerful,” comparing its potential to that of a personal tutor. Given that the human-led tutoring business is a billion-dollar industry that inevitably excludes lower economic groups, it’s obvious why AI is being lauded as enabling greater social mobility in education.
It seems the UK Department for Education is on board. It has positioned EdTech as a tool to “reduce teacher workload, boost student outcomes and help level the playing field” - particularly for SEND students. When it comes to SEND, there is evidence that AI can help, not least with personalisation, being able to assess the pupil’s strength and customise content, such as speech recognition for deaf children, for example. But is there also a danger that the promises of Big Tech in the classroom also serve as budget-saving automation in an age of low birth rates, restricted educational expenditure, greater SEND demands and the ongoing consequences of Covid? Is AI being conceived as part of the way to fix the problem of the EHCPs that currently leave parents pulling their hair out in frustration, and are costing local councils millions? I’m not suggesting that a child’s support plan would be outsourced to a large language model, but there is a degree to which big tech may be seen to be rescuing big government when it comes to classroom provision in what are undeniably increasingly challenging conditions.
But the issue is not what AI can offer, it’s what it replaces. And what is handed over in exchange. Our kids’ privacy, for example. Only 16% of nations currently have data protection laws that cover children in education. Likewise, the preponderance of overexposure to algorithmic biases and underexposure to the one thing that SEND children, indeed all children need: human support and interaction. What is more, there is very little research on the likely consequences of this. We are already hearing that AI is impacting the development of the frontal lobe of the brain for children, and that brain atrophy in adults is a serious cause for concern. What’s to be gained if we cut, paste and prompt all day without ever flexing our imagination?
Back in 2023, UNESCO published a report that warned of an over-reliance on EdTech, pointing to the specific dangers of widening inequalities and marginalised learners, not because they won’t have the tech, but because they will rely on it as a cheap alternative to in-person teaching. And this comes just at the time when, in a digital-driven world, we need human skills nurtured more than ever. We need more socialisation in schools, not less. Education has always been held up as the great equaliser. But AI may become the great stratifier. In underfunded schools, they’ll get bots. In wealthy households, they’ll get human tutors. Are we sleepwalking into an educational apartheid?
Rejecting all this tech doesn’t make you a Luddite. Put to one side for a moment the popularity of chalkboards and pencils in the Valley, and consider what is going on in China. This Spring, the state released tight guidelines on how AI should be used in schools. While it’s introducing AI into the curriculum, it has also frozen its use during national exams and doubled down on regulating screen time. Soaring rates of myopia (shortsightedness) and internet addiction among children have prompted a backlash. Online gaming is now dubbed “spiritual opium,” with anyone under 18 limited to three hours per week. AI facial recognition software is used to detect misuse. In schools, any pupil wanting to bring a phone must submit a written request. The Double Reduction Policy, introduced in 2021, also slashed homework and massively reduced after-school tutoring. One thing stands out from all this: in authoritarian China, the State is determining policy, not Big Tech.
The conversation around mass technology echoes our debate about mass-produced food. Once celebrated as progress, both are now quietly reinforcing inequality. Just as diets are sometimes split along class lines - ultra-processed food for some and organic, home-cooked meals for others - so too are our digital encounters. The right to switch off is becoming a priority for the affluent. A digital detox is the very essence of a first-world problem - or luxury. Some now speak of “digital nutrition” - helping children consume better-quality content in moderation, not banning it outright. It’s a useful metaphor. But like healthy eating, it often relies on money, time, and oversight — all things in short supply for many.
And so the gap may keep widening: not between those who can afford tech and those who can’t, but between those whose learning is mediated by people, and those whose learning is governed by platforms, between a curriculum that nurtures brain development and that which numbs it. In the Valley, and increasingly elsewhere, the affluent are stepping out of the standardised, mass-produced, automated infused model of education - just as they do with food. The children of the wealthy are opting out of EdTech. The children of the poor are being locked into it. We urgently need to ask whether AI is here to enhance education, or to cheapen it for those who already have the least.
Inheritocracy in the News
I’m currently in the South of France for a much needed holiday but the Inheritocracy promo continues apace: had fun recording this Radio 4 documentary with comedian Tony Hawk on inheritance and why he is leaving his son nothing, had a nice little piece in Stylist Magazine (didn’t write the headline!), and nice to see Inheritocracy reviewed on The Money Show YouTube in South Africa!
If you would like to see me discuss the book, do check out a lovely interview I did with the brilliant Vicki Spratt from the Independent- check it out in full on YouTube here.
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Thanks for reading,
Eliza