It was just a question over breakfast.
“What’s a metaphor?” Mira asked her father, spoon halfway to her mouth.
He began to explain, but she interrupted: “So it’s when something isn’t what it is—but also is?”
There was a silence at the table—not confusion, but recognition. She had already touched it, before any definition arrived. Before a lesson plan or rubric could intervene.
That moment—so small, so ordinary—was also everything.
Because this is how real learning often arrives: sideways, unscheduled, alive. A flicker of attention. A question asked not because it’s required, but because something inside needs to know.
And I wonder: in the schools we are now building—will there still be room for that?
From AlphaGo to Alpha School
There’s something in the name: Alpha.
It began with AlphaGo—Google DeepMind’s breakthrough that defeated the world champion in Go, a game long thought to lie beyond the reach of machines. Then came AlphaZero, AlphaFold, AlphaEvolve—each pushing the boundaries of what AI could optimize: strategy, science, even evolution itself.
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