Presence not Pixels

What 1,000 Children Just Taught Us About the Future of Education By Kirra Pendergast

When we talk about education, we default to the tangible. Infrastructure, teacher shortages, curriculum reform, and access. It’s a language shaped by bureaucracy and funding models, not by the children who live inside those systems.

Something extraordinary happened when over a thousand preschoolers from ten countries were asked how they would improve education. Their answers cut through policy-speak with the clarity only children can bring. They didn’t ask for innovation. They asked for joy. Toys in playgrounds. Teachers who give hugs. Schools that are free, not because it's convenient, but because it’s just. Learning, they told us, should never be locked behind money.

This wasn’t a staged campaign or a token roundtable. It was a global consultation organised by Dr Eirini Gkouskou of University College London, alongside the Bright Start Foundation, reaching children aged three to six in Brazil, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Zimbabwe, and the UK. The prompt was deceptively simple: how would you help the 175 million children around the world who are missing out on pre-primary education? The children’s responses were not diluted by diplomacy.

One by one, they named what was missing:

• Transport for those who couldn’t get to school

• Uniforms for those who had none

• Crayons to share

• Money to help

• More schools are being built where there are none.

They spoke with the instinct of justice, not charity. Their ideas now feed into a historic UN treaty that seeks to enshrine early education as a universal human right. A milestone driven not by lobbyists, but by those closest to the truth.

And what they didn’t say may be the most powerful part.

Across every country, from crowded cities to remote villages, not one child spoke of iPads or smartboards or internet access. Not one wished for digital tools. Their imagined worlds were rich in human care. Stories read aloud, help for children with disabilities, shared food, and shared space. The omission is not accidental. It’s a signal. In a culture that feeds children digital content before they can speak in full sentences, their silence on technology is a form of resistance. It tells us they haven’t yet learned to mistake stimulation for connection. That even without the language for surveillance capitalism or algorithmic manipulation, they are asking for something ancient and essential: to be known, not tracked. To play, not perform. To feel safe in the presence of other people—not just protected behind a screen.

But here lies the fracture.

What the children didn’t mention is also what now threatens everything they hope for. The danger that won’t arrive through the classroom door, but will drift in silently through every unsecured network, every app disguised as education. Online safety is not a sidebar. It’s the fault line. And it is cracking early. These same children who asked for books and belongings are already living under digital exposure they cannot see or understand. They are filmed in nurseries. Tracked through educational software. Their facial expressions, speech patterns, and play preferences were scraped and stored before they knew how to spell their own names. Many will start school having spent more hours watching YouTube than being read to. And still, online safety is framed as a teenage issue. As if danger has the courtesy to wait for adolescence.

It doesn’t.

We owe these children more than legislation. We owe them an education that doesn’t just prepare them to navigate the online world, but protects them from being harvested by it before they know it exists. Because when children dream of schools filled with kindness, not code, they are telling us something we refuse to hear: that presence, not access, is what keeps them whole.

Preschoolers are already online. That is not up for debate. The question is: why aren’t we protecting them like it matters?

In the same consultation where children called for free crayons and kindness, they also revealed what they didn’t ask for. Not one child asked for an iPad. Not one asked for a robot tutor. Not one called for facial recognition entry gates or AI learning dashboards. The tools adults obsess over as “innovation” are irrelevant to children’s vision of safety and education. They are not begging for more technology. They are begging to be seen, to be held, to belong.

That distinction matters because the way we’ve fused technology into early education is not neutral. It has eroded the most basic forms of safety in the name of engagement. Surveillance has replaced supervision. Algorithms have replaced adult attention. And while children learn to share toys in real life, we’ve handed over their digital lives without consent.

Something I called out in an Australian Parliamentary Inquiry in 2023, was backed up by a 2024 report from the 5Rights Foundation revealed that many educational platforms marketed for connection with parents of preschoolers harvest more personal data than adult platforms. Tracking sleep, location, language preferences, and even facial expressions during “learning” games (https://5rightsfoundation.com). Parents are rarely fully informed about what they are consenting too. Educators are not equipped to vet what happens behind the interface. And for the most part, most are still operating on the assumption that screen time is the only risk.

But screen time isn’t the issue. It’s what the screen does during that time.

This is where the original insights from those 1,000 children must now be heard louder. Because they remind us that education begins with trust, not tools. That learning happens in relationship, not in content delivery. And that safety, at its core, is not firewalls or app restrictions. Safety is emotional. It’s cultural. It’s about knowing that the space you're in, physical or digital, is built to honour your humanity, not exploit your habits.

When a child says, “I would help by giving money. One day, I saw a hungry child on the street, and I gave him my cheese bread”, they are displaying a moral clarity that should humiliate most legislative bodies. Because they already understand what it means to protect someone. Not just from hunger, but from harm. From loneliness. From being erased.

So what would it look like to apply that instinct to online safety?

It would mean building laws that treat children's data as sacred, not marketable. It would mean funding training for early years educators on the psychological impact of algorithmic learning. It would mean stripping surveillance out of classroom tech. It would mean requiring tech developers to prove, not just claim, that their products are developmentally appropriate. And it would mean recognising that a four-year-old’s right to privacy is not less valuable than a parent's right to share and a politician’s right to power.

You want a real early education policy? Start there.

Start with the premise that the most radical, most future-proof curriculum is one built not for performance, but for protection. One that doesn't just teach children how to use the internet, but how to survive it with their inner world intact.

The greatest threat to a child’s education today isn’t poor literacy. It’s digital exposure without defence. It’s being shaped by systems they don’t understand, judged by algorithms they can’t see, and sold to advertisers before they can spell their own name. And if that sounds dystopian, it’s because it is. But it’s also happening.

A child said, “Kindergarten is important so that every child feels smart and strong”. That is the bar. Strength. Belonging. Joy.

Let’s make schools free. Let’s fill playgrounds with toys. But let us not be so distracted by those beautiful asks that we forget what else is at stake. Early education without exploitation is an act of civilisational progress. An internet that protects the dignity of a four-year-old isn’t a dream.....it’s just basic decency. If your school, service, or centre is ready to move beyond fear-based digital education and toward something calmer, smarter, and system-informed, we’re here to support. Whether it’s staff training, parent sessions, or privacy, governance and compliance in early childhood and education settings, we help you build safety into the culture, not just the policy.