Don’t Hand Education Over To Ai

For nearly three decades, I’ve worked in Christian education, leading schools in Boston, Missouri, and Illinois. Increasingly, I’m fielding questions about the place of technology in K–12 schooling.

The questions often presuppose that technology is beneficial: How will my children master the new technologies they’ll need in a fast-moving world? Won’t they fall behind if they’re not using AI in kindergarten? Don’t we need to equip them with screens and tablets? How else will they be successful in a good college or find a good job?

As a Christian educator, let me share a few principles that can help us think wisely about technology.

1. Technology can be used judiciously to find knowledge—but not to teach wisdom.

It’s possible that AI can be used as a tool to help children become wise. But if it can, it’ll be used by parents and teachers who were themselves formed through a time-tested process of education—a prerequisite for helping others do the same.

AI in the hands of a school-age child is like sitting a 10-year-old in an Indy car and asking him to steer the track. His feet may reach the gas pedal, but there are lots of ways it can end badly. The most common wreckage results from using AI like a souped-up version of CliffsNotes and a fraudulent shortcut to genuine learning.

Early in my career, I watched the arrival of computers. Schools across the country, including mine, scrambled to ensure we got devices into every child’s hands. We added computer classes to teach students how to pull down menus and create PowerPoint presentations, lest they be left behind in a rapidly changing world.

That was a mistake. We were duped into believing that the priority of education was the transfer of knowledge rather than the genuine formation of minds and hearts. Today, my classical Christian school in the suburbs of Chicago uses no screens in the elementary grades and limits access to laptops for research and writing during the middle-school years.

The difference is remarkable. Our priority is inspiring students to wonder about the world God made while capturing a vision for their place in it. They love learning, and they read widely, think deeply about ideas, and write and speak well. I’ve yet to see how any form of digital technology can genuinely help children learn such skills.

2. Education can help or hinder children’s understanding of what’s true and good.

I often compare children’s development to assembling a giant puzzle. They constantly receive information about the world from their observations and life experiences; from the input of key influencers, such as parents and teachers; and from what they hear about historical people. Education is a huge part of the puzzle assembly.

Our priority is inspiring students to wonder about the world God made while capturing a vision for their place in it.

Because knowledge isn’t neutral and is never complete, the goal of learning is to identify the ideas that are true or reflect the way things really are—things worth loving and valuing, things that will ultimately contribute to a flourishing life that aligns with God’s intention at creation.

These are the positive pieces of information that will fit the ordered puzzle children are assembling.

We also need to guard against the negative pieces of information—those that poison or distort a true understanding of God’s good design for our bodies, of the way he made us to relate to each other, or of the purpose for which he made us. That information distorts the whole puzzle and must be rejected.

This process of learning is life-shaping and lifelong, but the school-aged years are by far the most formative.

The Bible affirms this process of puzzle assembly. The book of Proverbs notes the charged nature of knowledge by admonishing the reader to get prudence, understanding, insight, discernment, truth, and good sense. Doing so leads to righteousness, justice, equity, every good path, life, flourishing, healing, knowledge, and honor—in short, wisdom. The path leading to true knowledge begins with the fear of God (Prov. 9:10) and leads to Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3).

3. Knowledge cannot be separated from virtue.

The goal of our children’s education is to help them build a good puzzle—to gain right knowledge about the world. Though it’s rarely acknowledged in our era, that knowledge cannot be separated from virtue. The fabric of knowledge includes the direction or end to which knowledge can be used.

This view of knowledge has shaped the idea of schooling for millennia. Its most important implication is this: The cultivation of a child’s mind is inextricably bound to the cultivation of his or her heart.

The currently popular alternative view of knowledge turns out to be a subtle but dangerous lie—that knowledge is neutral data that can be free of any moral, ethical, or spiritual implication unless it’s intentionally and overtly attached. Viewed this way, knowledge can be dispensed by or retrieved from any source with equal benefit, making AI a game-changing educational tool. All we need to do is get children in a room with access to ChatGPT, and in time they’ll emerge as fully formed people.

Not so. Knowledge isn’t neutral. A child’s mind cannot be separated from his or her heart. A brain isn’t merely a blank storage device on which neutral data can be deposited and stored before being sent on to the “heart,” where moral and spiritual significance can be attached if the individual is so inclined.

Knowledge isn’t neutral. A child’s mind cannot be separated from his or her heart.

Rather, children—people created in God’s image—are endowed with capable minds, hearts, souls, and spirits. They’re able to think, wonder, inquire, and evaluate as they learn about the world and everything in it. What’s more, God has wired the human heart with an inclination to make sense of the world and find answers to big questions: How did we get here? What happens when we die? What’s the meaning of life? What’s wrong with the world? What’s the best way to live?

No Shortcuts

As the mushroom cloud looms on the horizon from the explosion of AI onto the scene, the highest priority for Christian parents shouldn’t be how to get their children up to speed with the latest AI technology. It should be how to give them opportunities to gain true knowledge that enables them to use their God-given abilities to assemble a true picture of the world and life.

This assembly will require time, space, and hard work; there are no effective shortcuts to the formation of the mind and heart. Educating a child isn’t the same as downloading information as quickly as possible. It’s a satisfying, life-shaping process through which parents and teachers help children learn about the world God created and become the people God made them to be.