I’ve been asked three times in the last two days what AI means for the future of education.
I have two young daughters. I’m a former high school teacher, and I still teach at university.
I have skin in the game.
We have known for decades that students learn better with individualized support, immediate feedback and the ability to progress after demonstrating mastery.
Bloom’s famous 1984 “two-sigma problem” gave this idea its most memorable expression.
His headline result was exceptional, not typical, but later research still finds well-designed tutoring to be one of education’s most effective interventions.
Until now, providing that level of attention to every child was economically and operationally impossible.
AI changes that constraint.
A randomized Harvard physics study offers an early glimpse. Students using a purpose-built AI tutor achieved more than twice the learning gains, in less time, than students completing an established active-learning lesson.
It did not beat a bad lecture. It beat a well-designed classroom experience.
But it was carefully built around the course and sound learning principles. It was not simply ChatGPT handed to students.
Used as a tutor, AI can strengthen the learner.
Used as an answer machine, it can improve the homework while weakening the student.
A large study of Chinese students found better homework, completed faster, followed by worse performance on closed-book assessments.
Learning requires productive struggle.
Students need to retrieve information, attempt solutions, explain their reasoning, make mistakes and correct them.
AI should preserve that struggle while removing delayed feedback, unnecessary repetition and material delivered at the wrong pace.
This is not an argument for replacing teachers.
The future is not children sitting alone with chatbots. It is teachers using AI for adaptive practice and feedback, freeing them to spend more time diagnosing, challenging, motivating and building relationships.
Affluent children may receive AI plus informed adults, tutors and enrichment. Other children may be given AI instead of human attention.
That is not democratization.
So what can parents do?
Start with one specific gap. Use a curriculum-aligned diagnostic and a trusted educational tool. Then give the AI clear instructions:
1. Do not give my child the answer.
2. Ask one question at a time.
3. Offer hints, not solutions.
4. Require an explanation of their reasoning.
5. Return to previous mistakes.
6. Increase the difficulty only after they demonstrate mastery.
Then remove the AI and ask your child to teach the concept back to you.
The goal is not a better-looking answer.
The goal is a stronger, more curious and increasingly independent learner.
AI gives us the opportunity to make individualized support available to every child. It is infuriating to see well meaning teachers dismiss AI or choose willful ignorance.
Whether it improves education will depend on how we use it.
