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At first blush, it sounds too good to be true: a learning experience that\u2019s precisely tailored to a child\u2019s needs, strengths, and struggles, speeding up or slowing down as the moment demands, with infinite patience. <\/p>\n
For a decade or more, that\u2019s been the promise fueling the education technology industry\u2014customized learning that fuels rapid progress. Yet, for the most part, it was too good to be true. Not because the ambition was wrong, but because the prevailing vision has had it backwards.<\/p>\n
The vision of AI in education that has drawn the most attention and investment centers on personalized learning. Think Khan Academy\u2019s AI tutor, or models like Alpha School, where teachers are largely replaced by AI-driven platforms. Alpha School is a small but fast-growing network of private schools where students are taught via AI instruction, with adults in the room serving more as coaches and caretakers than teachers.<\/p>\n
The idea is intuitive: Every student gets an adaptive, AI-driven experience tailored to their specific needs and strengths. The algorithm meets the child. The teacher steps back. It sounds compelling, until you think about what it actually produces: device-mediated instruction. Students are in front of screens, moving through content at their own pace, supervised by adults whose job is more coordination and childcare than teaching.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve run this experiment already at scale, without choosing to. It was called the COVID pandemic. Years later, we are still recovering from what it did to student achievement, social development, and the relationship between kids and school. That experience, plus a broader cultural reckoning about screens and child development, has given us real evidence about when devices serve kids and when they don\u2019t. The answer is more nuanced than either the techno-optimists or the skeptics would suggest. But one thing is clear: A screen is not a substitute for a teacher.<\/p>\n
The problem with personalized learning is that it turns the teacher into a bottleneck, rather than the leverage point. That architecture is backwards.<\/p>\n
Personalized learning puts the algorithm in the driver\u2019s seat. But personalized teaching puts the teacher there, with dramatically better data, better tools, and more time to do what only a teacher can do.<\/p>\n