Some ideas improve education. Others simply survive because nobody has questioned them loudly enough.
Provocations grounded in research, sharpened by experience, and written for readers who can tolerate a raised eyebrow.
Artificial intelligence is not coming. It is here. The useful question is not whether students should use it, but whether adults can help them use it wisely. Technology does not absolve educators of judgment. It makes judgment more important. The work ahead is to teach verification, transparency, discernment, and responsible collaboration—not to pretend a transformative tool can be wished away.
Explore the argumentImagine asking a billion people the same question and discovering that, despite their different cultures, languages, experiences, and beliefs, they all begin to answer in remarkably similar ways. That sounds less like education and more like the world's largest conformity experiment. Yet every day, millions of us ask the same handful of large language models what to think, what to write, and increasingly, how to reason.
We measure what is easy, reward what is visible, and too often confuse a tidy number with meaningful understanding. Assessment should create information that helps a learner improve. When it merely sorts, ranks, punishes, or decorates a report card, it has become a bureaucratic ritual wearing an educational costume.
Explore the argumentPromising ideas are celebrated, photographed, piloted—and quietly buried before they can threaten familiar routines. Schools rarely lack ideas. They lack the structures, incentives, and institutional courage required to move an idea from an enthusiastic pilot into everyday practice. This is why educational innovation rarely scales.
Explore the argumentApparently, Artificial Intelligence is going to kill us.
Read the full essayLeadership is not the art of keeping everyone comfortable. Sometimes improvement begins exactly where comfort ends. Maintaining a system is management. Improving it is leadership. The distinction matters most when evidence challenges the routines everyone has learned to defend. Courage must come before consensus.
Explore the argumentChildren need adults who ask better questions, model curiosity, and resist the temptation to mistake compliance for learning. Parents should not be spectators in their children's education. They should be informed partners—curious about learning, alert to change, and ready to ask what preparation for the future actually means.
Explore the argumentTechnology does not absolve educators of judgment. It makes judgment more important. The work ahead is to teach verification, transparency, discernment, and responsible collaboration—not to pretend a transformative tool can be wished away.
Assessment should create information that helps a learner improve. When it merely sorts, ranks, punishes, or decorates a report card, it has become a bureaucratic ritual wearing an educational costume.
Schools rarely lack ideas. They lack the structures, incentives, and institutional courage required to move an idea from an enthusiastic pilot into everyday practice.
Maintaining a system is management. Improving it is leadership. The distinction matters most when evidence challenges the routines everyone has learned to defend.
Parents should not be spectators in their children's education. They should be informed partners—curious about learning, alert to change, and ready to ask what preparation for the future actually means.