A.I. Should Not Be The Focus. Learning Should Be.

Picture this: A teacher excitedly introduces her class to a new AI-powered writing assistant. Students' eyes light up as they prompt the tool and generate paragraph after paragraph with minimal effort. Within minutes, they've produced essays that would have taken hours to write by hand. The teacher feels proud of embracing innovation, but something gnaws at her as she reviews the work. The writing is polished, yes, but where is the struggle that builds resilience? Where is the messy process of organizing thoughts that develops critical thinking? Where is the learning?

This scenario plays out in classrooms across the country as educators grapple with artificial intelligence's role in education. The question isn't whether AI belongs in our schools (it's already here).

The real question is this: Are we using AI to enhance meaningful learning, or are we letting the tool become the destination instead of the vehicle?

The Tool Trap: When Technology Becomes the Goal

In our rush to modernize education, we often fall into what I call the "tool trap", when we become so enamored with the capabilities of new technology that we lose sight of why we're using it in the first place. This isn't unique to AI; we've seen it with interactive whiteboards, tablets, and countless other innovations that promised to revolutionize learning but often ended up as expensive distractions.

Shawn Young puts it this way, in his recent article, “Not All EdTech Is Created Equal”:

In education, there’s a constant hum about the future of classrooms and how technology will change everything. But as much as our world evolves, the foundational needs of education remain the same. Classrooms will always be places where kids learn to be part of something larger than themselves. They’re environments where students build relationships, develop critical thinking, and grow into who they’re going to be as adults and citizens. If there’s anything we’ve learned, it’s that technology should be a tool to support these goals—not a replacement for what makes learning, at its core, a human experience.

The difference with AI is its seductive power. Unlike previous technologies that required students to actively engage, AI can do the thinking for them. It can write their essays, solve their math problems, and even create their presentations. When 60% of educators in a Forbes study report using AI in the classroom, with 55% citing improved learning outcomes, we must ask: Are we measuring the right outcomes?

The danger lies not in AI itself, but in how we frame its purpose. When we lead with "Look what this AI tool can do!" instead of "How can this help students learn better?", we've already lost the plot. The technology becomes the star, and learning becomes the supporting actor.

Purpose-Driven AI: Learning First, Technology Second

Meaningful AI integration starts with a fundamental shift in perspective. Instead of asking "How can we use AI in our classroom?", we should ask "What learning challenges do our students face, and might AI help address them?"

Consider the story of Teaching Lab, which worked directly with educators to develop AI-powered math tools. Rather than creating a flashy AI application and hoping teachers would find uses for it, they started with the real needs of math educators. Through co-design sessions, they discovered that teachers needed help customizing curriculum to meet their specific students' contexts and cultural backgrounds. The resulting AI tools—a browser extension for curriculum customization and a Google Doc integration—weren't impressive from a technological standpoint, but they solved actual problems that teachers faced daily.

This approach shows what purposeful AI integration looks like: the technology serves the learning goal, not the other way around. The AI becomes an invisible force, working behind the scenes to support deeper engagement with mathematical concepts rather than replacing the thinking process altogether.

The Engagement Paradox: Active vs. Passive Learning

One of AI's most compelling promises is the same promise so many EdTech products have worked towards in the last few decades: increased student engagement. 

Interactive AI-powered games, personalized content, and immediate feedback can indeed capture students' attention. But engagement isn't learning, it's just the first step to learning.

True learning requires what cognitive scientists call "desirable difficulties". These are challenges that force students to retrieve information, make connections, and apply knowledge in new contexts. When AI removes these productive struggles, it can actually hinder the learning process, even as it increases engagement and attention metrics.

Take the example of AI-powered writing assistants. Students may feel more engaged as they watch their ideas transform into polished prose with minimal effort. But this engagement comes at a cost: they miss the metacognitive benefits of wrestling with word choice, sentence structure, and argument development. The AI has made the task easier, but not necessarily more educational.

A tool like we developed with Write Like A Human, takes the opposite approach. Students write themselves, and AI gives feedback in twenty different areas of style, content, topic, conventions, and more. Then students re-write, edit, and revise to improve their scores and better their writing.

The key is designing AI interactions that maintain cognitive load while reducing unnecessary friction. For instance, an AI tutor that asks probing questions to guide student thinking preserves the mental work while providing scaffolding. The student still does the heavy lifting; the AI simply helps them lift more effectively, and at their correct zone of proximal development.

Stories from the Field: AI Done Right

The Socratic Dialogue Simulator

An eighth-grade history teacheruses AI not to provide answers, but to ask better questions. Her students engage with an AI system designed to conduct Socratic dialogues about historical events. When studying the causes of World War I, students don't ask the AI "What caused WWI?" Instead, the AI poses questions like "If you were a European leader in 1914, what factors would influence your decision to go to war?"

The AI's role is to probe deeper, challenge assumptions, and help students articulate their reasoning. Students report that these conversations feel more natural than traditional worksheets, but the learning outcomes show they're developing stronger analytical thinking skills. The AI facilitates the dialogue, but students do the intellectual work.

Check out more about this strategy in John Spencer’s recent article, AI For Deeper Learning.

The Personalized Feedback Loop

A third-grade teacher uses AI to provide immediate, specific feedback on student writing. But rather than having the AI correct errors or suggest improvements, it identifies patterns in student work and generates questions for teacher-student conferences. When a student struggles with paragraph organization, the AI flags this for the teacher and suggests conversation starters: "I notice your ideas are really creative. Can you help me understand how these two ideas connect?"

This approach preserves the crucial human element of teaching while giving the teacher superpowers in identifying learning needs. The AI handles the pattern recognition; the teacher handles the relationship building and instructional decision-making.

Check out more about this strategy in this piece from The Journal.

The Transfer Challenge: Beyond the Classroom Walls

The ultimate test of any educational approach isn't what students can do in the classroom, it's what they can do when they leave it. Transfer of learning, the ability to apply knowledge and skills in new contexts, should be the main thing guiding all our instructional decisions, including how we use AI.

Unfortunately, much of current AI use in education focuses on immediate performance rather than long-term transfer. Students may become proficient at using AI tools to complete assignments, but struggle when faced with novel problems that require independent thinking.

Consider two approaches to using AI in a high school biology class:

Approach A: Students use AI to generate lab reports based on their experimental data. The reports are well-formatted and scientifically accurate, leading to high grades and apparent learning.

Approach B: Students use AI as a research partner to explore questions that arise during their experiments. The AI helps them find relevant studies, understand complex concepts, and formulate hypotheses, but students must still design experiments, collect data, and draw their own conclusions.

Both approaches use AI, but only Approach B builds the scientific thinking skills that students will need in college, careers, and life. The first optimizes for immediate performance; the second optimizes for transfer.

The Human Element: What AI Cannot Replace

As we explore and figure out AI's role in education, it's crucial to remember what makes learning fundamentally human. AI can process information, recognize patterns, and generate responses, but it cannot provide the empathy, creativity, and wisdom that effective teaching requires.

The most powerful learning experiences happen in the space between minds, when a teacher sees the spark of understanding in a student's eyes, when peers challenge each other's thinking, when a mentor shares wisdom. These moments of connection and growth cannot be automated, no matter how sophisticated our AI systems become.

This doesn't mean AI has no place in education. Rather, it suggests that AI's highest purpose is to amplify human capabilities, not replace them. When AI handles routine tasks, teachers can focus on the uniquely human aspects of education: building relationships, fostering creativity, and nurturing the whole child.

Practical Principles for Purpose-Driven AI

As educators consider how to integrate AI meaningfully into their practice, several principles can guide decision-making:

Start with Learning Goals: Before introducing any AI tool, clearly articulate what you want students to learn and how the tool will support that learning. If you can't make this connection explicit, reconsider the tool's use.

Preserve Cognitive Load: Ensure that AI reduces friction without eliminating the productive struggle that builds understanding. Students should still do the thinking; AI should simply make that thinking more efficient or effective.

Maintain Human Connection: Use AI to enhance, not replace, human interaction. The most powerful learning happens through relationships, and AI should support these connections rather than substitute for them.

Design for Transfer: Consider how AI use in your classroom prepares students for contexts where AI may not be available or appropriate. Build independence alongside technological fluency.

Embrace Transparency: Help students understand how AI works and when they're using it. This builds AI literacy while maintaining academic integrity.

The Main Thing Is the Main Thing

In the end, the question isn't whether AI belongs in our classrooms, it's how we can use it to serve our highest learning purposes. When we keep the learning at the center of our decision-making, AI becomes a powerful ally in creating the meaningful, relevant experiences that help students grow into thoughtful, capable human beings.

The main thing should continue to be deep, transferable learning that prepares students for an uncertain future. And it must remain the main thing. AI can be a remarkable tool in support of this goal, but only when we resist the temptation to let the tool become the destination.

As we stand at another hinge of history we have a choice. We can chase the latest AI innovations, hoping they'll solve our educational challenges. Or we can hold fast to what we know about learning—that it requires struggle, connection, and purpose—and use AI to make these timeless principles more accessible to more students.

The choice we make will shape not just how students learn, but who they become. Let's choose wisely, keeping learning at the heart of everything we do. After all, in education as in life, the main thing should always be the main thing.