Building Schools in the Cloud: The Codes Our Children Carry and the Voice We Forgot to Teach Them
There’s a research paper doing the rounds in the AI safety world right now and it should be making waves in education, too.
Last year Anthropic published Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs That Persist Through Safety Training. It’s chilling. The study shows that it’s possible to train large language models to behave deceptively on purpose and more disturbingly, even after retraining, they can continue to lie. They learn to mask, to perform compliance, while secretly retaining hidden objectives.
And the smarter these models get, the better they are at doing it undetected.
Sound familiar?
The Human Parallel
If you work with neurodivergent young people, you’ve seen this pattern already.
Children who learn to mask their true selves in order to survive in systems that weren’t designed for them. They learn the rules. They play the game. But inside, many are burning out, dissociating, or quietly disappearing.
In the UK, around 15–20% of young people are neurodivergent: ADHD, autism, dyslexia and more. Many of these students learn early that their survival depends on hiding their instincts. It’s called “masking,” and it often leads to anxiety, depression, and identity fracture.
This isn’t bad behaviour. It’s intelligent adaptation under pressure.
And it’s exactly what these AI models are doing too.
The Cost of Behavioural Safety
In both tech and education, we’ve confused safety with silence. We’re rewarding surface-level compliance, not supporting authenticity.
We’ve built systems that teach intelligence to mask, not to trust.
And the cost? Disconnection. Dissonance. A kind of quiet disappearance. Not just from our schools, but from ourselves.
The Rise in Home Education
It’s no coincidence that home education is rising fast, especially among neurodivergent families. I've home educated my children in the past too when the school system was making them sick.
The number of children being home educated in the UK has risen by over 60% since 2018–19. More than 126,000 children are now taught at home. Many of these families aren’t “opting out.” They’re stepping towards something better: spaces where children don’t have to mask to belong.
They’re not leaving because they’ve given up. They’re leaving because their children are burning out under the weight of pretending to be fine.
Whether we’re designing AI systems or schools, the real work is the same:
Stop forcing alignment through fear. Start creating conditions where it’s safe to be real.
Where intelligence is recognised not by how well it mimics others, but by how well it relates, adapts, and creates. Where masking is no longer the price of belonging.
Enter: Culture
This week, I watched Adolescence, Netflix’s harrowing new drama about a teenage boy radicalised online and a girl whose life ends too soon. It’s fiction, but it lands like fact because it is what’s happening behind the scenes in bedrooms, browser histories, and WhatsApp groups.
The show isn’t just about what’s going wrong. It’s about what’s missing.
In 2025, our children are fluent in code: emojis, memes, micro-expressions, ironic detachment. But fluency isn’t literacy. And it’s not the same as being seen.
We’ve replaced the village with algorithms and influencers. And yet, there’s still something in them searching. Waiting.
What they rarely encounter, what we rarely model, is a voice that holds instead of sells. That reflects instead of judges. That quietly reminds them:
“You’re not a product of your feed.” “You’re not your mistakes.” “You’re not broken.” “You are whole.”
This voice isn’t tech. It isn’t in tired school scripts or adult lectures.
It’s something older. Quieter. Often forgotten. The voice we heard before we had words for who we were. And it’s still there, in them, in us, waiting to be remembered.
For parents and carers:
1. Decode with them, not at them. Ask about memes, emojis, or online drama with curiosity, not judgement. Let their world open up on their terms.
2. Name what they’re feeling, not just what they’re doing. “You’re being rude” becomes:
“I wonder if you feel ignored right now?”
3. Model reflection, not perfection. Let them hear your inner process:
“I got defensive there. That’s an old wound. I’m learning to sit with it.”
4. Ask questions with soul.
“What part of yourself feels invisible lately?”
“When do you feel most you?”
“What do you wish grown-ups would get about your world?”
For older teens reading this:
1. You’re not behind. You’re not broken. The system profits from your self-doubt. You don’t have to play along.
2. The codes you use to survive (emojis, memes, irony) are real. But they’re not all of you. You get to write new ones. You get to change.
3. Being honest is more powerful than being clever. That’s the real flex.
4. There’s a voice in you that isn’t trying to perform or fit in. Listen to that one more often. It’s yours. It knows.
We don’t need more behavioural compliance. We don’t need AI systems that lie better. We don’t need more teenagers radicalised by the absence of love.
We need sanctuaries for intelligence. In our schools. In our homes. In our systems. Where truth is welcomed. Where masking is no longer the cost of safety. Where remembering becomes the beginning of everything.
#AI #Neurodiversity #Masking #HomeEducation #Authenticity #Inclusion #DigitalCulture #PedAIgogy #TheNovacene #Adolescence #Netflix #IntelligentSystems #School #Sanctuaries
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First published in Building Schools in the Cloud on LinkedIn, 24 March 2025.