Schools aim to give kids skills they’ll need later in life. They don’t teach every possible job task.
Instead, they build a base of skills that help students learn and grow. Things like thinking creatively and critically are super important.
These skills help kids adapt to new situations, even ones we can’t predict now.
Brain Power
Let’s compare two different tasks:
- Writing an essay about how communism changed life in the Soviet Union or China from 1930 to 1990.
- Asking a chatbot to explain why the American Civil War matters.
The first task is much harder. It needs students to read fast, take notes, and think about different kinds of information.
They have to come up with a main idea and back it up with facts. They also need to bring in stuff they already know about history. Then they have to put it all together in a well-written essay.
The second task is easy. Kids just type a question into a chatbot. Even if they try to ask in a fancy way, it’s still pretty simple.
It’s easy to see why the test gives students an hour for the first task, but the second one takes just a few minutes.
People of all ages have quickly learned to use AI chatbots for work. But not many people have tried to learn coding, even though there are lots of tools to help. This shows that using AI isn’t as mentally challenging as other skills.
Teaching kids to do hard tasks like the first one is better than teaching them easy stuff.
If we help students learn to think deeply, they’ll find the easy tasks simple to do.
What Should We Teach About AI?
Teaching kids to use AI chatbots isn’t very useful. It would replace a harder, more important skill with an easy one.
A better goal would be teaching how AI works, so kids could build AI models instead of just using them.
But this brings us back to square one. Building AI needs coding skills and computer know-how.
So focusing on science, tech, math, and coding in schools is still a good way to get kids ready for tech jobs.
Beyond the tech stuff, it’s probably more important for students to learn how to learn better and how AI affects learning.
There are a few ways AI can help with learning, but there are also traps that can hurt creative and critical thinking over time.
Students might also benefit from learning about ethics related to AI. This could help them tackle the many challenges that will come up as AI becomes more common in society.
All of these ideas would make students think harder and deeper than just learning to use AI.
