Students Are Struggling. Could Technology Become Part of the Solution?

Across many developed countries, something worrying is happening in education.

The latest PISA results show that student performance across OECD countries has continued to decline. Average performance in reading and mathematics has reached the lowest levels ever recorded by PISA. One in five 15-year-olds is now classified as a low performer in science, mathematics and reading.

Denmark provides one recent example. New results have generated headlines about Danish students performing at historically low levels. But this is not simply a Danish problem.

It is part of a much broader question:

How do we help children learn successfully in a world filled with screens, smartphones, social media and artificial intelligence?

The obvious reaction might be to blame technology.

But that may be too simple.

Technology can distract students from learning. It can also become one of the most powerful learning tools ever created.

The difference lies in how we use it.

More technology does not automatically mean more learning

Schools have spent decades introducing computers, tablets, learning platforms and digital teaching materials.

Yet giving a student a computer does not automatically make that student a better learner.

OECD research illustrates this distinction. Moderate use of digital technology for learning is associated with better academic performance than either very little use or excessive use. At the same time, digital distraction has become a significant problem. Around 28% of students across OECD countries report that their classmates are distracted by digital devices during most or every science lesson.

The lesson is therefore not that technology is inherently good or bad.

Technology amplifies the way it is used.

A smartphone can interrupt concentration every few minutes.

The same smartphone can provide access to an extraordinary library of knowledge.

An AI chatbot can write an assignment for a student.

The same AI chatbot can challenge that student with questions until they genuinely understand the subject.

Those are radically different uses of the same technology.

AI creates a new educational challenge

Artificial intelligence makes this distinction even more important.

According to PISA 2025, 46% of students across OECD countries now use AI chatbots at least weekly to help them learn.

That means the debate about whether students should use AI is quickly becoming outdated.

Students are already using it.

The important question is:

What are they using it for?

Imagine a student studying the French Revolution.

They could ask an AI:

“Write a 500-word explanation of the causes of the French Revolution.”

The AI produces the answer.

The student copies it, edits a few sentences and submits it.

The technology has completed the intellectual work.

Very little learning may have taken place.

But the same student could ask:

“I am studying the causes of the French Revolution. Don’t explain them to me yet. Ask me questions one at a time and help me discover what I understand and what I am missing.”

Now something very different happens.

The AI might ask:

“What was happening to the finances of the French monarchy before 1789?”

The student answers.

The AI follows up:

“Why did that financial problem become a political problem?”

The student thinks again.

If the student gives an incomplete answer, the AI can probe further.

Instead of replacing thinking, technology is stimulating thinking.

An ancient learning method for the age of AI

There is nothing particularly new about this approach.

More than two thousand years ago, Socrates became famous for teaching through questions.

Rather than simply giving students answers, the Socratic method uses carefully chosen questions to expose assumptions, identify gaps in understanding and encourage deeper reasoning.

Modern AI makes something resembling this approach available to almost anyone.

A student can effectively say:

“Be my Socratic tutor.”

Instead of asking the AI to solve a mathematics problem, the student can ask it to guide them through the reasoning.

Instead of asking for the meaning of a poem, they can ask the AI to question their interpretation.

Instead of requesting the answer to a biology question, they can ask the AI to test their understanding until they can explain the concept themselves.

This changes AI from an answer machine into a learning partner.

And that distinction may become one of the most important educational skills of the coming decade.

Finding what you don’t know

Effective learning is not simply about receiving information.

Students also need to discover what they do not understand.

Unfortunately, people are often poor judges of their own knowledge.

Reading a chapter several times can create a feeling of familiarity:

“Yes, I know this.”

But familiarity is not the same as being able to retrieve or apply knowledge.

Technology can help expose this problem.

A student can give AI a topic and ask:

“Test me with ten increasingly difficult questions. Do not give me the answer immediately when I am wrong. First give me a hint.”

Suddenly the student discovers:

“I understood the first three questions, but I really don’t understand questions four and five.”

That discovery is valuable.

The student has found a knowledge gap.

Now study time can be directed toward the things that actually need work.

Turn passive studying into active learning

This points toward a broader principle.

Technology is most valuable when it encourages active learning.

Compare two students preparing for the same examination.

One spends two hours rereading notes.

The other uses technology to:

• answer questions without looking at the material,
• explain difficult concepts in their own words,
• identify gaps in understanding,
• receive progressively harder questions,
• practise applying knowledge to new situations,
• revisit topics they previously answered incorrectly.

They may spend the same amount of time studying.

But they are not performing the same type of mental work.

The second student is constantly required to retrieve, explain, analyse and apply knowledge.

Those are the activities that actually exercise understanding.

Technology should increase thinking, not reduce it

This may be the central educational challenge of the AI age.

For years, technology has often been sold to education with a simple promise:

Make learning easier.

But perhaps that is the wrong objective.

Good learning is not always easy.

Thinking requires effort.

Remembering requires effort.

Solving a difficult problem requires effort.

The purpose of educational technology should therefore not be to eliminate intellectual effort.

It should be to make that effort more productive.

A calculator can remove unnecessary arithmetic when the objective is advanced mathematics.

An AI tutor can explain a difficult concept in five different ways.

A digital system can remember which questions a student previously got wrong and bring them back at the right time.

Technology can personalise exercises, generate practice questions and provide immediate feedback.

But the student should still be doing the thinking.

Students need to learn how to learn with technology

PISA itself is moving in this direction.

Its work on Learning in the Digital World focuses not simply on whether students can operate digital devices, but on whether they can regulate their own learning, investigate problems and use technology to construct knowledge.

That is a much more meaningful definition of digital competence.

Knowing how to open an app is not a valuable educational skill anymore.

Knowing how to use technology to become a better learner is.

That includes learning when to use AI.

It also includes learning when not to use it.

Sometimes the right educational decision is to close the computer, put away the phone and read a book without interruption.

Sometimes it is to use an AI tutor to investigate something you don’t understand.

Sometimes it is to practise recalling information without assistance.

Digital education should teach students to recognise the difference.

The opportunity ahead

Declining academic performance should concern parents, teachers and policymakers.

But it should not lead us to conclude that technology has no place in education.

The more interesting challenge is to use it better.

AI can allow students to receive individual explanations that were previously available only from a private tutor.

It can question them.

Challenge them.

Generate practice material.

Identify weaknesses.

Adapt exercises to their ability.

Help them explore subjects beyond the classroom.

And provide immediate feedback when they misunderstand something.

But none of these benefits are automatic.

Students need to learn how to use these tools.

The future of education should therefore not be a choice between traditional learning and technology.

It should combine what we already know about effective learning with the extraordinary capabilities of modern technology.

The Socratic method is more than two thousand years old.

Artificial intelligence is only beginning.

Put the two together, and we may find that some of the best solutions to today’s educational challenges come from combining very old ideas about how humans learn with very new tools for helping them do it.

At Saraswati Nation, that is the future of education we are interested in building:

Technology that does not think instead of students — but helps students become better thinkers.