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For a long time, development meant school, college, and perhaps a professional program later in life. You went somewhere, listened to an expert, took notes, and hoped that what you learned would somehow shape how you lived or worked.

That model still has value, but it is no longer enough. In the age of iPhones and AI, almost anyone can access information, advice, coaching prompts, and world-class content within seconds. What is becoming scarce is not access to knowledge, but the kind of learning that actually changes how we see, choose, and act. 

Also Read: The paradox of ancient genius

This matters deeply for Indians abroad. Parents are asking how their children will stay grounded in values while growing up in a fast, distracted, hyper-digital world. Professionals are asking a parallel question for themselves: how do we keep developing after school and college, when life is busy, attention is fragmented, and information is everywhere?

If we look honestly at where people grow the most, it is rarely from information alone. More often, it happens when they are working on something real, something that matters enough to ask something of them.

That is why internships matter. Community projects matter. Design studios matter.

A student starts an initiative and has to persuade others to join. An intern is given a real problem to solve. An entrepreneur tests an idea with actual customers instead of refining a pitch deck for the tenth time. In each of these cases, reality becomes the teacher.

Even Harvard Business School, long associated with the case study method, now explicitly emphasizes field-based, project-based learning alongside classroom discussion. Its Field Global Capstone places students in teams working on real product or service challenges with partner organizations. 

That shift is worth noticing. Projects open up not just the mind, but the person.

Traditional education has usually been strongest at working on the head: concepts, frameworks, arguments, models. Other forms of development focus more on the heart: motivation, meaning, confidence, fear. Still others try to shape the hands: habits, behavior, execution.

But life does not separate these so neatly.

When someone is trying to launch something meaningful, all three are present at once. They need clarity and creativity in the head. They need courage and commitment in the heart. They need disciplined action in the hands. If one is missing, progress slows. A person may understand what to do, but not care enough to act. Or care deeply, but not know how to move. Or stay very busy without stepping back to learn.

That is why simply attending another class or hearing another talk often does not change much. Content by itself rarely transforms people. Even coaching can remain abstract if it is not connected to a real challenge in real time.

Experiential learning works differently. It brings head, heart, and hands together around something that matters. Then, when that experience is followed by reflection and cognitive connection, people often develop faster. They begin to see differently, feel differently, and act differently.

For Indians abroad, there is a beautiful example of this already in our communities. Gandhi Camp, which begins again this Saturday in the Bay Area, is now in its 40th year, and children keep coming back year after year.

On the surface, it is a camp. In a deeper sense, it is also a design studio for children.

Kids do karma yoga projects. They learn meditation. They absorb values through stories, practices, fun, and play. They are not simply told to be thoughtful, kind, or responsible. They live those qualities in community. The “project” is not a school assignment. It is learning how to serve, relate, reflect, and grow with others.

That is one reason it stays with them. Values sink in more deeply when they are experienced, practiced, and shared. The head understands. The heart connects. The hands participate.

This is also why AI, for all its usefulness, cannot be the whole answer. AI can support learning, widen access, and offer smart prompts. It can act as a kind of mirror, reflecting patterns and possibilities back to us. But it cannot replace the human environments in which people test themselves, take risks, build trust, and discover who they are becoming.

So the question for our time is not whether we need more content. We clearly do not. The better question is what kinds of spaces help people grow now.

Schools still matter. Colleges still matter. But outside them, we need more living laboratories of development: internships with responsibility, community projects with purpose, camps where values are practiced, and studios where people bring real challenges and work through them with others.

In many ways, this is the educational question of our time for Indians abroad. Not how do we tell people more, but how do we create environments where their own intelligence, courage, and humanity can come alive?

 

(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of  New India Abroad.)

 

 

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