rebelEducator

A student with a textbook will outperform a student with ChatGPT. Hear me out. A team at UPenn took about 1,000 high school students and split them into two groups. One group got ChatGPT to help them with their math practice. The other group got nothing but their textbook and notes. The ChatGPT group scored 48% higher on homework than the textbook group. By every metric, it looked like the question was already answered. Then the researchers took ChatGPT away and gave everyone the same exam. The ChatGPT group scored 17% worse than the students who never had it. That is insane. None of this means AI can't work in education. It means a raw chatbot is not a learning tool. (Peer-reviewed, published in PNAS, 2025.)

By eighteen, we expect students to be doing adult-level professional work in their chosen domain. A child who has spent six years exploring their interests, building projects, and contributing in real ways is not starting at zero when they turn eighteen. They have already built expertise. Already contributed value. Meanwhile, the child who spent those six years in conventional classrooms might not engage in a real-world endeavor until their 20s. Our students have developed the ability to teach themselves what they need to know. The capacity to build at an adult level. These are not gifts some children have, and others lack. They are the results of how you structure their time from twelve onward.

One of the few pieces of parenting advice that I’m highly confident in and think generalizes widely across personalities, family cultures, ages: If your child is concentrating on doing something, don’t interrupt. Don’t correct, don’t compliment, don’t join in. Leave them be.