Education - More Human, Not More Digital

Over the past few months, as I have stepped into a global education media leadership role with the BRICS Educational Film & Media Association, I have found myself in conversations across countries, systems and contexts. The dominant narrative everywhere is familiar. Artificial intelligence, digital platforms, scale, access and personalisation continue to shape the discourse. And yet, the most powerful learning moments I encounter are not digital. They are human.

A student finding the courage to express a difficult thought. A classroom sitting in silence after a story unfolds. A discussion that moves beyond answers and begins to explore questions. For all the talk of technology transforming education, what is actually emerging is something more fundamental. Education is not becoming more digital. It is becoming more human.

This is where the growing role of film and media in education becomes important to understand. Their impact is often explained through engagement or novelty, but that is a limited view. Film works because it restores something classrooms have gradually lost. It brings back emotion, context and lived experience.

A Constructive Shift

There is now growing research supporting this shift. Studies in educational psychology and neuroscience consistently show that emotionally engaged learning improves retention and recall. Research indicates that learners retain significantly more information when content is experienced through narrative and visual context, compared to passive instruction. The OECD has also emphasised learner agency, reflection and meaning-making as core competencies for future-ready education.

When a student engages with a story, they are not merely receiving information. They are interpreting it, feeling it and questioning it. Learning shifts from instruction to reflection, from content to meaning.

"When classrooms adopt storytelling meaningfully, they are not introducing something new. They are aligning learning with how the mind naturally works. This shift is also changing the role of the learner."

I have seen this first-hand in my own work as a filmmaker working with schools. In classrooms where films are used thoughtfully, students often open up in ways that traditional methods rarely enable. Conversations around difficult themes such as loss, bullying, self-esteem or identity begin to emerge naturally. Students do not respond because they are instructed to—they respond because they connect. That is the difference.

Storytelling as Pedagogy

This is also why storytelling is increasingly being recognised as pedagogy. Human beings make sense of the world through stories. When classrooms adopt storytelling meaningfully, they are not introducing something new—they are aligning learning with how the mind naturally works. This shift is also changing the role of the learner.

Across systems, students are being encouraged not only to consume media, but to create, critique and collaborate through it. This signals an important transition. Learning is moving from passive reception towards agency. When students create, they are no longer outside the learning process—they are shaping it.

At the same time, the rise of media has made another capability essential. Media literacy is no longer optional. Students today are navigating a world of information layered with bias, perspective and competing narratives. UNESCO has identified media and information literacy as a critical competency for responsible citizenship in the digital age. If students cannot read media, they cannot read the world.

Crossing Borders through Technology

Technology, of course, plays a critical role in enabling all of this at scale. It allows stories to travel, voices to be heard and classrooms to connect across geographies. It is important, however, to be clear—technology is not the driver of this change; it is the enabler. The real shift lies in what we are beginning to value.

We are moving from delivering information to enabling interpretation, from covering content to building perspective, from standardised answers to individual voices. There are, however, risks that schools must recognise.

As storytelling gains acceptance, there is a tendency to formalise it too quickly. It begins to get converted into templates, activities and predictable outcomes. The moment that happens, its essence begins to weaken. Storytelling is powerful because it is exploratory. It allows for ambiguity, multiple perspectives and personal meaning. It cannot be reduced to a format.

There is also a broader global tension emerging.

Eliminating Risks

As technology connects classrooms across borders, there is an opportunity for shared learning across cultures and contexts. At the same time, there is a risk of flattening voices, where local stories are overshadowed by dominant narratives.

The responsibility, therefore, is not just to connect the world, but to represent it with integrity—to ensure that while we build global classrooms, we do not lose local identity. This is where educators and institutions will play a defining role—not in adopting more tools, but in making more thoughtful choices.

What stories do we bring into classrooms? Whose voices are we amplifying? Are we creating space for students to respond, or only to receive? These are not operational questions—they are philosophical ones. They will shape the future of learning far more than any platform or technology.

Conclusion

For years, education has been trying to become more efficient, more measurable and more scalable. What we are now witnessing is a correction. Learning is returning to what it has always been at its core—a human process that involves emotion, reflection, dialogue and meaning-making.

The tools may change. The mediums will evolve. But the centre of education is shifting back to where it belongs.

The real question is not whether education will become more human—it already is. The question is whether our classrooms are ready for it.