In the late 17th century, Europe’s greatest intellectuals were consumed by the quarrel of the ancients and the modern, satirised by Jonathan Swift in The Battle of the Books. In the 18th century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau asked whether education should nurture children’s natural capacities or mould them to society’s expectations. The great educational dispute of the 21st century is rather less august: should children be reading books or collecting coins for cartoon robots? In the past decade, a new divide has opened in Britain’s classrooms. Not between rich and poor, clever and dull, or private and state schools, but between children still taught by teachers using whiteboards, pens and paper and those being instructed by an avatar on a screen.