I
n those heady days, it seemed like the horizon stretched on endlessly as I would hear about a new app or web tool that could supercharge my classroom and make learning more engaging and
accessible for every student. Then came the reality: a project we worked on with augmented reality wouldn’t load when we scanned the QR code, a web tool would lag and stutter and crash when 22 students used it simultaneously, and often 8 or more students wouldn’t have a charged iPad. Famously, futurist Robert Amara posited, “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” (Ratcliffe, 2016) A decade later, with the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (genAI) we are presented with yet another shiny new toy. The truth is, genAI will reshape education but not at the speed it is predicted. In the midst of this change, there must be anchors that education holds as unmovable truths. Without these anchors, being blown off course is inevitable.
A HUMAN CENTERED APPROACH In a school, the center of the universe is the student and those students are undeniably human. Our school’s student learning outcomes are to develop that student into an adult who is innovative, values diversity, has an intrinsic desire to learn, and impacts the world around them. Most schools have some similar aspirational statements for their students. Educators must cling to these in the overwhelming flow of hype and the rush for profit as every app and tool is increasingly integrated with genAI. Our human students need our time, our energy, our compassion, and our knowledge. Part of the selling point of genAI is the time and speed at which it can accomplish tasks, the optimization of a work flow. We must never reduce our students to a work flow. It will always take time to build within students characteristics that will benefit them and our world in future days.
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THROUGH FAILURE A key component of learning is failure. Many humans have learned to write. Many have written books, which line the shelves of libraries around the world. Still, we ask children to learn to write, knowing that they will make mistakes, they will fail, but great strides in their learning towards mastery will arise from their failures. With genAI, we are now at a point where a five year old child could use voice recognition features and tell the genAI to produce a university level paper on astrophysics.
Education must be careful to fight against this type of results-based value. The output of our students is not our goal. Many times schools will produce publications that tout how students performed on Advanced Placement tests or scored highly on other tests. Is this the product, the scores? The student is not only the center of education but the product of the educational process. The generation of students that currently inhabits our
schools is one of the most risk averse groups in history. (Boles, 2025) How will they be shaped by the looming idea that a computer can give them a far better answer than they can produce, the student just needs to push a button? Education must not set its sights on developing students who can produce perfect products, but instead it must produce students who are willing to try, to be imperfect, and to try again, stumbling on their way towards mastery.
SELF AGENCY & LEADERSHIP Another aspirational goal of nearly every school is for students to become better leaders. This often takes educators through the twisted labyrinth of defining “What is leadership?” Simply put, you cannot lead others until you can lead yourself. Leading yourself can be also succinctly termed “sel- agency”. Before a student can become president of the student council or serve as captain of a sports team, they must push themselves into those arenas, where they are tested and bloodied but then emerge as leaders. How can students develop this agency when any question or problem is turned into a genAI prompt? Outsourcing self-agency to a machine, no matter how smart, makes one wonder who is the robot and who is in control. If our next generation of leaders is to be innovative and far-sighted, then they must grow self-agency in the halls, rooms, and fields of our schools.
“ THE TRUTH IS, GENAI WILL RESHAPE EDUCATION BUT NOT AT THE SPEED IT IS PREDICTED. IN THE MIDST OF THIS CHANGE, THERE MUST BE ANCHORS THAT EDUCATION HOLDS AS UNMOVABLE TRUTHS.”
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GLOBAL EDUCATION
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