Festivals and conferences

THE start of 2026 was a busy time.

- BY FAISAL BARI

I was invited to participate in five conferences on education and I attended two ‘festivals’: the Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) and the Faiz Festival in Lahore. A lot of people have written their views on these and other gatherings and many of their observations about the need to ensure broader participation and representation as well as deeper engagement are well taken. However, here I will reflect largely on what this participation allowed me, a teacher and researcher in economics and education, to gain.There were a lot of experts from different areas that I was able to meet during and around the discussion sessions. Conversations with them allowed me to learn a lot about areas that I do not directly work in. Artificial intelligence was a hot topic in almost all the conferences and festivals I attended. And rightly so. AI is expected to cause significant changes in almost all sectors of interest; we need to understand its potential as well as the disruption it is going to cause, and figure out ways to cope with the disruption as effectively as possible.

What changes will AI bring to the education sector — in curricula, pedagogy, assessments and in how we teach and learn? What impact will this have on teachers, schools and universities? How do we prepare for it and how do we prepare our students for the world of tomorrow? These are not trivial questions. I listened to and engaged with experts on public health, education, industry, computer science, physics, philosophy, literature and mental health to deepen my understanding of pertinent issues. I could, of course, read about all this. But conversations proved to be a crash course and provided me with nuance that reading on its own might not have been able to do.