“Why Did My Friend Get More?” A Three-Year-Old’s Question About Rewards

Posted on by Ahmad Amirali

What a school attendance award taught me about motivation in the early years.

My three-and-a-half-year-old came home recently with a question I was not ready for.

“Why did my friend get a bigger reward? Why didn’t I get the same one?”

His school had introduced a full attendance award. Attend 90 to 100 per cent of the time, and the reward is bigger. Attend less, and it is smaller, or there is none.

My son cannot read a percentage. But he understood exactly who got more.

Let Us Be Fair to Rewards

Rewards are not villains, and the research does not say they are. A meta-analysis by Cameron and colleagues concluded that rewards are not generally harmful to motivation. Verbal rewards tended to raise interest, and rewards for tasks children find dull even increased their free-choice interest. The larger Deci, Koestner and Ryan review agrees on one thing: positive feedback strengthened both interest and free-choice behaviour.

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What a Teenager Does with an Answer That Hurts

Posted on by Ahmad Amirali

Teenagers, AI companions and the hour after a bad answer

Last term, I finished a session with a Grade 11 class in Karachi. While the others packed their bags, one girl stayed back. She waited until the room was empty. Then she told me what an AI app had said about a decision she had made at home. It had told her she was in the wrong, and that most people would agree.

She told me this after the app had already answered. Then, almost as an afterthought, she added: “Sir, marks bhi kam aa rahe hain.” (Sir, my marks are dropping too.)

I have thought about the order of that conversation ever since. The app came first. The teacher came last.

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Nobody Asked Her What She Thought of the Answer

Posted on by Ahmad Amirali

What a youth camp in Garam Chashma revealed about the real AI divide, and it isn’t the one we keep talking about.

I spent twenty days this summer running youth camps in Garam Chashma, Chitral, with students aged fourteen to twenty. I went in expecting to talk a lot about access bandwidth, devices, career goals, challenges and the usual checklist for a remote valley like this one.

A girl finished a camp assignment task on her phone in about 2 minutes. She had asked an AI tool for the answer, copied it, and was ready to move on. I asked her a simple question: what did she think of the answer it gave her?

She looked at me, genuinely puzzled. “Sir, theek tha” (Sir, it was fine), she said, and waited for the next question, not because she couldn’t think harder about it, but because no one had ever asked her to.

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We Thought He Was Just a Quiet Child

Posted on by Ahmad Amirali

What the conversation around “virtual autism” is telling Pakistani parents, educators, and early childhood classrooms and why we are only beginning to listen.

There was a boy sitting in the corridor outside a parent workshop I was running last year. He must have been three, maybe three and a half. His mother was inside the session. He was with a domestic helper, parked on a plastic chair, a tablet propped in his lap.

He did not look up when I walked past. He did not look up when another child came and stood near him. He did not look up at all, for the entire two hours I was facilitating. He was not upset. He was not restless. He was perfectly, completely still.

On the way out, his mother mentioned almost as an aside that his nursery teacher had suggested he be assessed. He was not talking much. He did not play with the other children. He preferred to be alone.

“Woh bus khaamosh hai,” (He is just quiet,) she said. “Humein lagta tha yeh uski aadat hai.” (We thought it was just his nature.)

I have been thinking about that boy ever since.

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“She Seems Fine” The Most Dangerous Phrase in Pakistani Parenting

Posted on by Ahmad Amirali

What a 2016 American film reveals about the quiet crisis that Pakistani parents are trained not to see.

I was watching The Edge of Seventeen one evening, a 2016 American coming-of-age film that had been sitting in my watchlist far longer than I care to admit. About twenty minutes in, something clicked. Not in the way a good film entertains you. In the way a good film makes you sit up and think about someone you have not thought about in months.

I found myself thinking about a girl I had worked with two years ago. I will call her Aisha.

Aisha was seventeen, in her final year of school, and predicted strong grades. Her teachers described her as hardworking. Her parents used the words parents always use for teenagers who are not obviously struggling: “woh theek hai” (she is fine). She participated in class. She submitted her assignments on time. She smiled when she smiled at.

She was also falling apart, quietly, in a way that none of the adults around her had any language for including her.

By the time the film ended, I understood exactly why it had clicked.

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Your Teenager’s Best Counsellor Sits One Row Behind Them

Posted on by Ahmad Amirali

Pakistani schools are full of young people who already know how to show up for each other. We just haven’t trained them yet.

I was observing a mentee’s class last term, one of those routine observation visits where you sit quietly at the back with a notepad and try not to distract anyone. The lesson was moving along well enough. But what caught my attention had nothing to do with the teaching.

In the third row, a Grade 10 student had quietly shifted her chair a few inches closer to the girl beside her, a Grade 8 student who had recently transferred from another school and still carried that particular kind of stillness that new students wear when they are not yet sure where they belong. Without a word, the older girl slid her open notebook across. Pointed to something. The younger one nodded. A small moment. Thirty seconds, at most.

But I stopped writing my observation notes entirely.

Nobody had arranged that exchange. Nobody had trained the older student to do it. And yet something genuinely useful had just happened, something a teacher standing at the front of the room could not have engineered, no matter how skilled.

That is the thing about peer support. It finds its own way in. The question is what happens when we decide to take it seriously.

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The Mirror in the Palm of Their Hand

Posted on by Ahmad Amirali

What happens to a teenager’s identity when no one, not even their technology, ever disagrees with them?

I was running a session with a group of sixteen and seventeen-year-olds at a Karachi school last term. We were talking about AI, how it works, how they use it, and what they tell it. At some point, almost without thinking, I asked a question I hadn’t planned.

“How many of you have ever disagreed with your AI? Like, actually pushed back on something it said?”

Silence. A few uncertain looks around the room. Then, slowly, one hand.

“Sir, maine ek baar try kiya tha, but it just agreed with me anyway.” (Sir, I tried it once, but it just agreed with me anyway.)

The room laughed. I laughed too. But on the drive home, the less funny it seemed.

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The Loneliest Generation: Why Pakistani Teenagers Feel Alone in a Connected World

Posted on by Ahmad Amirali

Being seen online is not the same as being known at home.

I remember sitting in a parent workshop in Karachi last year when a father raised his hand and said something I have not been able to forget.

“Sir, mera beta ghar mein rehte hue bhi ghar mein nahin hota.” (“Sir, my son lives in our home, but he is never really there.”)

He wasn’t talking about physical absence. His son was in the next room, phone in hand, surrounded by voices from a screen. The father hadn’t lost him to rebellion or bad company. He had lost him to something quieter. A distance with no name. A kind of presence that isn’t really there.

His son has hundreds of followers. He posts. He scrolls. He replies. But when was the last time anyone, including the people who love him most, asked him something real?

He has 847 followers. He came home from school today and didn’t speak to a single person he trusts. That’s not a connection. That’s performance.

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Is Your Teenager Dating an AI?

Posted on by Ahmad Amirali

When emotional connection moves from home to a chatbot, what are we really missing at home?

A few weeks ago, a parent came to me after my class. She was not panicking. She was confused.

“Sir, mene mere bete ka phone check kiya toh usne kisi se ghanton baat ki thi. Phir pata chala… koi insaan hi nahin tha.” (Sir, I checked my son’s phone and saw he had been talking to someone for hours. Then I found out… it wasn’t a person at all.)

Her son, seventeen, O-Levels, quiet at home, had been spending two to three hours every evening in deep conversation with an AI chatbot. Not for homework. Not for any school project. He was sharing how lonely he felt. How he felt misunderstood. How he wished someone at home would ask him something other than “padhai kaisi chal rahi hai?” (How is your studying going?)

The chatbot had been listening.

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Teaching Teenagers in the Age of AI: Are We Preparing Teachers for What Classrooms Are Becoming?

Posted on by Ahmad Amirali

From AI use to classroom practice, what teachers need to navigate changing learning realities in Pakistan

A few weeks ago, during a classroom discussion, a teacher said something that has stayed with me:

‘I know my students are using AI. I just don’t know what I am supposed to do about it.’

It was not frustration. It was not excitement either. It was something in between a quiet uncertainty.

‘Samajh aa raha hai ke kuch change ho raha hai… lekin kya karna hai, yeh clear nahi hai.’ (I can sense something is changing… but I’m not sure how to respond.)

And perhaps this is where many teachers are today.

A Classroom That Is Changing Quietly

In many secondary classrooms, AI is already present. Not as a formal school initiative. But as something students are exploring on their own.

They are:

  • generating answers quickly,
  • completing assignments differently,
  • relying less on struggle and more on instant support.

This shift is subtle. It does not always disrupt the classroom visibly. But it is changing how students experience effort, thinking, and learning.

Teachers feel this change even when it is not openly discussed.

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