The post on LinkedIn was so elegantly simple, I kept coming back to it:

“The more you code without AI, the better you will be at utilizing AI to code. The irony around ‘vibe coding’ is that its earliest adherents will be the worst at it. College freshmen that write all their code with LLM’s (large language models), thinking that they are early adopters, will not develop a deep understanding of programming. Those that learn to code manually and avoid overuse of LLM’s in their coding for as long as possible will learn programming and software development at a deeper level, and when they switch to ‘vibe coding’, they will be much better at it than those who vibe coded from the start.”

Liam Ralph was in our first CAST Tech High School graduating class, recently graduated from UTSA, and is beginning a final internship with H-E-B in data engineering, something we celebrate as a nonprofit network of schools created to connect young people to high-wage, high-demand local jobs.

I sat with his comment even as I have been chewing on multiple recent articles about the science of reading that connect a drop in higher-order thinking to the decline in reading books in their entirety. As a former English teacher who now leads a network of schools, this realization pains me. Some of my most powerful positive memories both as a student and a teacher involved the shared experience of deconstructing a book. I actually remember Crime & Punishment as well as I remember books I have read in recent years, most likely due to the act of discussion, debate, and building shared understanding. If you are not a lover of books, think simply about any task that requires deep focus, or productive teamwork. We know that the biggest currency in the world we live in today is attention; the challenge for us as people and as educators is to create space for activities that allow us to sink into contemplation, creativity, or the zone – a state of total mental involvement. I myself have not read a novel with the complexity of Crime & Punishment in several years.

I have ChatGPT on my phone and I believe that as educators we should greet new technologies and innovations with curiosity and openness. But I am also fascinated by how many shortcuts we have created in contemporary society that enable us to outsource our thinking. This is not a recent phenomenon. Recently, I was at a family reunion where we were playing a game of trivia with teams across 3 generations, and one of the questions required us to calculate a percentage, 23 out of 26. The family members in their 80’s quickly used pencil & paper to complete the problem, followed more slowly by those in their 50’s, whereas the young people, all smart and capable of doing math, ranging from age 9-25, mostly watched.

This Legislative session Texas passed a bill to ban cell phones in classrooms. I think I am glad, and I am also grateful that they left the actual implementation of how this will be done up to local decision makers. On the one hand, as parents and educators, I don’t see our job as keeping tools away from young people, but walking alongside as they learn to use them responsibly, and ideally modeling that behavior. On the other, I have heard stories from countless educators and students about the uptick in engagement, fun, and creativity they have seen when they have chosen to use paper, charts, hands-on experiments and movement, or to focus on relationships, team-building and movement. Nationally known classroom teacher Nicholas Ferroni recently offered the “unpopular opinion” that veteran teachers who taught before tech took over are better prepared to teach in tech-driven classrooms, saying “presence is the most important tool I have…hands-on learning activates more centers of your brain.” I wonder if as educators we can get to a place where we use AI to allow young people to pursue new DIY projects and discovery, while emphasizing the tactile, hands-on, and getting outside the classroom.

It is interesting to contemplate how many of us, young or old, have the self-discipline to resist the siren call of not only so much of the content we can find to distract ourselves online, but also the many ways in which AI and other thinking tools can simultaneously enhance and become a crutch in our thinking. When my multi-age group of family members engaged in the percentage exercise, most of us could also calculate in our head that the answer should be close to 90 percent. In this new phase of machine learning, it is nearly impossible to apply any kind of common sense test to complex computations, legal briefs, or analyses. Just like Liam above, there are plenty of smart people engaging in coding, analysis, and using AI in ways that push their thinking or extend their reach. But the temptation for dependency, and laziness, beckons like fast food after a long day at work and no groceries in the fridge. Temptation lurks, even for those of us with disposable income and healthy eating habits, despite our awareness that what we eat is directly linked to our mortality.

Jenny Anderson, author of The Disengaged Teen, argues that there are three things we can do to help our young people now, with an AI-driven future in mind: 1) Help them learn to manage their use of tech; 2) intentionally cultivate connection; and 3) lean into the ability to struggle in learning – because learning is hard.

Ironically, the learning landscape is transforming rapidly at a time when the way we measure school success cannot keep pace with this moment of complexity, adaptation, and critical thinking. A fellow educator compares standardized tests in Texas to the blood pressure test you get when you go to the doctor; if you get a poor score, it may be a distress signal and is worth seeking additional information. Schools that get As are sometimes great schools, and sometimes hyper focused on a not great test that measures only some things that we should care about.

It is up to the leaders of this community – and parents – to identify schools that are really challenging the status quo, shifting to more personalized learning, helping young people build caring relationships that will support them into adulthood and careers, and learning skills and competencies that translate into being problem solvers and innovators. Local leaders who want to see our schools rise to the challenges of today should be reminded that even healthy people occasionally have high blood pressure. What is important is the questions they ask next, and whether they are willing to engage with our schools to ensure that young people are getting challenged in ways that foster creativity, encourage problem solving, and urge them, like Liam, to engage in the productive struggle that is the hard work of learning something new.