Last week, I was preparing for a presentation and wanted to create a slide with a timeline of the most significant federal education laws over the last 50 years. So, I used “deep thinking” AI.
It quickly suggested that I expand the timeline to include the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Ed Act (which passed in 1965).
Then it asked whether I might want to include not just federal laws, but major policy initiatives (like Race to the Top) that weren’t enshrined in legislation. Good point.
Should it take media mentions into account, as a measure of “significant”? Sure.
A few clarifying questions later, the project was complete—just in time for one of our Ivy-league educated associates to return to the office with lunch (grilled chicken tenders from Milo’s).
In years past, that little project might have taken an associate several hours. It would have required input, guidance, and maybe a dose of mentorship from me. In the end, AI probably helped me to create a better product faster. But my younger colleague missed out on the sort of teachable moments that have helped so many of us evolve as professionals.
That evening, I came home to find my screenager juggling a soccer ball while listening to an audiobook at 1.8x speed. Turns out, he had a test “on the book” that coming Monday. His thinking: better to compress the book into focused bursts in the lead-up to an inevitably content driven test—and why not multi-task? He aced the test. But to what end?
These moments stuck with me because they crystalize the tension between productive struggle and efficiency that animates so much of today’s education discourse. More than ever, students, parents, and policymakers are asking foundational questions that challenge old mores and assumptions about not just how and whether to incorporate technology, but the very instruments, proxies, and pedigrees that American education has often optimized around.
Foundational questions are evident among the growing number of disengaged students who are now chronically absent. They are manifest in employer efforts to look beyond degrees when evaluating the skills of job applicants—and the growing number of Americans who are questioning whether college is “worth it.”
As Rebecca Winthrop, author of “The Disengaged Teen,” explained in a recent conversation with Ezra Klein: “We have to really rethink the purpose of education.” In U.S. News, Carnegie Foundation President Tim Knowles questioned the notion that 120 credits somehow “transforms a student into a productive member of society.” The Common App announced that 117 colleges would now be part of its “Direct Admissions” program, where colleges offer admission to students before they even apply. As XQ Institute CEO Russlyn Ali explained earlier this summer at the WSJ “Future of Everything” Festival, she’s on a mission to not only change high schools, but to rewire our “education architecture” by, among other things, rewriting high school graduation requirements.
Two years ago, Richard Culatta told MIT Tech Review that the conversation isn’t about whether technology belongs in classrooms; it’s about how we make sure it serves students rather than the other way around. Siegel Family Endowment President Katy Knight is now urging “techno-pragmatism,” a view that “recognizes the ubiquity and possibility of technology while acknowledging its limitations and those of the ecosystem that creates it.”
Of course, the AI we’re using today is the worst AI we’ll ever use.
That was the thought that played through my head while I scarfed down Milo’s and watched my child listen to an audiobook while practicing soccer. Why bother optimizing for the sort of tasks that were once proxies for educational (or professional) attainment at the dawn of the AI era?
Historically, education has been a laggard when it comes to the adoption of emerging technology. But it is now on the frontlines of a critical conversation about what needs to be retained and what we can discard as our technological capabilities accelerate. The truth is, it’s almost impossible to know. And we’re experimenting.
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