The longer I work as a teacher, the more I become convinced that our education system is eating itself alive.
Damn…
I know it sounds cynical. I know there are incredible teachers out there. I work with some of them. But every year I spend in education, I find myself asking the same question: When did we decide that thinking was optional?
You’ve probably heard of this little thing called AI. Apparently it’s the answer to everything.
Need to write? AI.
Need to draw? AI.
Need to study? AI.
Need to teach?
Apparently… AI.
Everyone talks about students using it to cheat. And yes, that’s a problem. Students are skipping the thinking part and jumping straight to the answer.
But honestly? There is more to it. Teachers are doing exactly the same thing.
The conversation has somehow shifted from “How do we protect learning?” to “Well… I guess this is unavoidable.”
So we’ve just… surrendered. No fight. No discussion. Just, “Might as well.”
“Might as well teach them to use AI.”
“Might as well generate lesson plans.”
“Might as well automate feedback.”
“Might as well have the machine write reports.”
“Might as well.”
And before you ask, apparently every student has access to unlimited internet, a decent phone, and an premium AI subscription they’ll happily keep paying forever…
Low income households don’t exist. And if they did all those kids can stay behind. It’s disgusting and deserves its own rant. Either way, nobody needs to learn how to write anymore. Or draw. Or brainstorm. Or struggle through a difficult paragraph until it finally clicks. Or stare at a blank page for twenty minutes because that’s where creativity actually comes from.
No. Just ask the robot.
Thinking is hard. Subscriptions are easy.
The part that really drives me insane isn’t even the technology. It’s how proud everyone seems to be.
Every week another professor proudly announces another widget that automates another piece of teaching, and everyone nods along like we’ve just cured a disease.
“Look! It only takes thirty seconds now!”
Fantastic.
Was the goal to educate children? Or to see how little effort we could invest before somebody notices?
A few days ago my colleagues and I got the exact same assignment we’d done last year. Write evaluations for every student. Not grades. Actual observations. Who they are. What motivates them. What they struggle with. The kind of information that helps next year’s teacher understand the human being walking into their classroom.
Last year it took time. Of course it did. You can’t summarize months of knowing someone in thirty seconds.
This year?
“Oh, we’ve built a widget.” Just type the student’s name and two or three keywords. Boom.
Paragraph generated.
I genuinely thought they were joking. Nobody laughed. Because they were serious. Worse. They were excited. We finished the entire thing in a fraction of the time. Everyone celebrated.
I looked at the finished document and thought: This is garbage. Pretty, well-formatted garbage.
AI had transformed months of human interaction into generic paragraphs that sounded impressive while saying almost nothing. And somehow that counted as progress.
We’ve become obsessed with making teaching faster. Since when was that the goal? Education isn’t a race. It’s one of the few things in life that’s supposed to take time.
Learning takes time.
Thinking takes time.
Getting something wrong takes time.
Writing a terrible first draft takes time.
Drawing something ugly before drawing something beautiful takes time.
Becoming a person takes time…
We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that removing friction is the same thing as improving education.
It isn’t.
Sometimes the friction is the education.
I’m not anti-technology. I’m not asking teachers to write with quills by candlelight. AI can be useful. It can save time on boring administrative work. That’s fine.
What terrifies me is how quickly we’re letting it replace the parts of education that were never supposed to be efficient in the first place. We’re teaching kids that whenever something becomes difficult, the correct response is to outsource it.
Don’t know how to write? AI.
Can’t organize your thoughts? AI.
Need to make art? AI.
Need to solve a problem? AI.
Sh*t, we might as well ask the students to stop thinking altogether. Don’t worry… your teachers will do the same…
Maybe I’m overreacting. I genuinely hope I am. Because from where I’m standing, we’re not using AI to support education. We’re using education to train children how to depend on AI. And somehow… People are applauding…
I hate it here…
AI Transparency Statement: All content in this article was developed, reviewed, verified, and finalized by the author. The author used ChatGPT for grammar review.
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