AI won’t kill education. But will it kill learning? The challenge isn’t AI itself—it’s whether students can still think for themselves when the answers are always one click away.
Cheating isn’t new. The only change is how fast students can find the answers without questioning if such a thing is really a good idea.
One of my students put it best when they told me…
She: “Mrs. Davis, if I get older and need brain surgery, I’m going to find me a really really old doctor.”
Me: “Why is that?”
She: “So my doctor actually knows how to do the surgery. I don’t want someone who leaned on AI to operate on me, I want someone who really knows how to do the surgery.”
We all acknowledge that there is learning “on paper” and learning that actually happens between the ears. We all know that we want authentic learning to occur. We used to call this “cheating,” but in some ways, with AI, the word isn’t really used anymore.
Somehow, we know that the use of AI doesn’t mean someone is “cheating,” but also that its nonuse doesn’t mean someone is really educated.
AI vs. True Knowledge: What Really Sticks?
1️⃣ I had a student this week discuss the many “uses” of ChatGPT in academic settings but then quickly said,
“I’ll tell you one way you can’t use AI.”
Me: “What is that?”
He: “I can’t use it to teach me how to play cards. I actually have to KNOW how to do that. I have to really know it, like to be able to use it without a computer nearby, so I just have to learn that.”
He realizes here that there is a difference between using AI and actually knowing how to do something.
Kids know the difference, and so do we educators.
✔️ Learning still happens between our ears. We all know this. We can use tools, but if the learning doesn't happen between our ears, we've just found a way to pretend we're learning when we're not.
AI Didn’t Invent Cheating – Students Have Always Found “Answers”
AI didn’t create cheaters—it just made shortcuts easier to find. Even Benjamin Franklin knew the power of imitation in learning. As a young man, he practiced writing by copying essays from The Spectator, then reconstructing them from memory. When he compared his work to the original, he spotted his weaknesses and improved. It wasn’t cheating—it was a strategy to learn and master the craft of writing.
Long before AI, students found ways to get the answers:
- Ancient times: Socrates likely caught students whispering answers before an oral exam.
- Printed books: Students copied from the World Book Encyclopedia.
- Classroom tricks: Some peeked at the teacher’s answer key, dated a smart student, or paid the smartest kid in class to do their homework.
But here’s the real difference—Socrates could look a student in the eyes and know if they truly understood. Can we still do that in an AI-powered world?
Finding the Questions That Take a Lifetime to Answer
Our students need to find questions. Questions that haunt them. Questions that keep them up at night. Questions that can take a lifetime to answer.
Questions like:
- How do we prevent wildfires from spreading?
- How can we help people in storms?
- How do we cure cancer?
- How do we help people from different countries work together?
- How do we teach kids when the temptation to cheat is as close as their back pocket?
AI isn’t the hero or villain of education. The heroes and villains are usually us.
And the frustration of AI can quickly turn us educators into villains if we let it.
Fast Answers, Slow Thinking
2️⃣ Something wasn’t right. A student finished a coding exercise in 27 seconds—a task that should have taken at least five minutes.
Formative Assessment Checks at the Beginning of Class
Thankfully, to open class, we did a series of rapid-fire coding activities inside Juicemind where the students had to write code. I noticed at the time that he and at least one other student were struggling with the basics.
So, as I went back to grade the homework, I looked at his work in. Code Combat.
When I saw one activity that took kids 5-10 minutes to do – that one took him, literally 27 seconds. The pattern repeated itself with quite a few activities.
My first thought was AI. (Why is our first inclination always to “blame” AI. Don’t we understand AI only gives what people prompt it to do? AI does not yet pop up and offer to do homework, except perhaps SnapAI, I’ve seen that gremlin inside SnapChat offer to “help” kids if they complain about homework. But that is a conversation for another day.)
So I emailed him, and he stayed after class to talk.
When I asked him about his time for the work, he said,
“I didn’t use AI; the answers are posted on the Internet. I didn’t need AI; I just copied the answer.”
I sighed. Not because of AI. Not because of some groundbreaking tech shift. But because I had seen this before.
Decades ago, kids copied from textbooks. Then, they Googled the answers. Now, they turn to AI. The only thing that’s changed?
The speed.
The speed at which students can find answers makes it harder to understand if learning is happening and can downright kill our relationships with students if we become suspicious and cynical.
If AI makes cheating easier, does that mean learning is harder? Or does it just mean we need better ways to check for understanding?
Answers are everywhere. Answer keys for just about every textbook we use are posted or available for purchase on the Internet. Parents have been doing this for some time. With the advent of homeschooling, this is a “market” for textbook companies. Unfortunately for us, sometimes parents buy the answer keys, but it is more about “helping kids do homework” who are enrolled in our classes.
✔️ Learning isn't about students getting the answers but about mastering the process to be able to answer the questions themselves. It's between the ears.
This between-the-ears phenomenon is vital. We want to educate the students so they know it. Without a book. Without a computer. So, they are educated.
We don’t stop teaching because a kid has someone doing their homework for them, or they copied out of the WorldBook Encyclopedia last night, or the answer keys are available on the Internet or because AI now becomes an instant answer key.
And even if you think oral feedback is the only way, I’ve seen a student take voice chatGPT and have it talk to an AI voice assessment tool, and neither tool realized it was talking to AI. We sat there and listened to it!
AI can be clueless. It is just a tool, after all. We are the ones with brains and morals and hearts and souls. We are the ones with purpose and joy and love and friendships.
And we have to continue to focus on the main things: teaching and learning.
Cheating and copying answers are as old as time. We have some new solutions, though. Some great ones!
The Craft of Teaching
Homework alone as verification of knowledge is out. To entirely depend on homework completion as a measure of knowledge is a mistake. Homework can be practice. Homework is not valid “proof” that between-the-ears learning has happened.
Formative Assessment is in. Now, I can’t just have students “do” homework. Homework is practice for knowing how to do the work in class. Formative assessment the moment students come to class, checks for understanding. It sees if the knowledge is between the ears. Formative assessment to know where students are instantly is a new tool for teachers. A good one.
Passive lecture is out. If you have a class where kids can coast and not engage, sad to say, many of them will. They’ll sleep in class. They’ll check out. This is an old complaint. (Bueller?)
Active learning and teaching is in. Students engaged in active learning, projects, and work in class is part of what we can do with tools like Nearpod and Peardeck (if we have to teach at the front of the room). Students need to be doing right there in class, in front of everyone. Part of the learning. With the teacher moving and interacting with students, not passively sitting at the desk.
And while we’re at it…
Authentic mutual engagement is in. But if you are a teacher actively engaged in learning and teaching – not from a gotcha perspective but from a perspective of authentic mutual engagement, then teaching and learning can happen in beautiful harmony. Teaching is an art. A craft. And remarkable teaching can inspire awesome learning.
Gotcha is out. Sure, we want students to know that we know if they are learning. However, it is too easy to make false accusations and make a mistake that keeps strugglers down and doesn’t catch stronger students who can mask the use of AI behind their traditionally perfect grammar and well-spoken tendencies.
Relationships are in. When I had the conversations with my students, these real conversations happened because I had real, positive relationships. This way, we can have conversations about the right thing to do so that students can learn.
Any “tool” to solve all our problems in education is out. Do we ever learn in education? How can we be so focused on learning content that we don’t understand anything about human behavior? If a student is struggling, one of the only things that has ever overcome the lack of inertia is an engaged teacher with a positive relationship with that student to help them move towards learning and engage.
The teacher is in. Teaching isn’t easy. It never has been. We have new challenges and old excuses. “kids cheat. It is hard to ‘catch it.’” I care more about kids catching the excitement and joy of learning than this “gotcha” thing with homework. Knowing a student didn’t authentically do homework means that I’m going to have to do other things with that student to make sure they’ve learned it. And the message I send about engaging in a conversation about assignments and the effort I make to work to have other assignments to ensure learning sends a message that I value what I’m teaching and I value if they learn it.
AI won’t kill education. It makes the complaints louder. It makes cheating more prevalent.
Wait. Before you go, let me ask you one thing.
AI has opportunities to help learning. But it also won’t fix it. The real question isn’t whether students can use AI—but whether they’re still learning without it.
Whether the learning is happening between the ears.
And so much of what we teach in schools isn’t the answers on a test. It answers questions like “What is my purpose in life?” “How do I make friends?” and “How can I help my team be stronger.” Questions that aren’t asked on a test but are essential to living a good life. These questions aren’t answered between the ears but within the heart.
That, my friends, is what teaching has always been about.
The heart.
And the heart of the matter is we have new challenges, but these are old complaints. Complaints since the beginning of time and teaching. And in those days, you didn’t need kids just to be able to talk about how to build a fire, they had to make one themselves. Their lives depend on it.
And these days, we need to build another kind of fire. A fire that sparks the joy of learning. The joy of the opportunities that await us sparked by some of the most powerful tools ever invented. Kids need to not be able to just talk about making a difference, they need to know how to build a better world tomorrow. Our lives depend on it.
What Do You Think?
If you like this post, share it with a friend. What do you think? Is AI just another tool, or is it changing how students think? Drop your thoughts below or on social—and share this with a teacher who’s grappling with the same challenge
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