The Playbook
Three moves for the summer, drawn from today's pieces.
Ask the school the question. At the next parents' evening, ask how they are thinking about AI and assessment. The answer, or the shrug, tells you more than any league table.
Treat the degree as a decision, not a default. It still pays for most, and not for all. Before anyone signs for the debt, ask what this course, at this place, really leads to.
Protect the struggle. Make sure your child still does hard things the slow way sometimes. The machine can hand them the answer. It cannot hand them the person who would have worked it out.
General information, not financial, legal or career advice.
The Playbook, drafted for the editor to rewrite and sign. Three moves, process not position, drawn only from this edition's pieces. Bold-imperative-then-why format. FCA-clean; standing disclaimer present.
- Matt Brazil A child starting school this September leaves it in 2039. No one in charge can tell you what it is for.
- Elena Marsh Britain just finished its biggest rethink of school in a generation. It never asked what school is now for.
- James Vahid We tell parents a degree is the safe investment in a child. The numbers now call it a bet.
- Dr. Ines Calderón A machine can now write the exam essay. The system's answer was to march children back into a silent hall with a pen.
- Ada Okafor Your child can now get the homework done without doing it. The real question is what the doing was for.
- Tomás Reyes Against the house: my paper thinks school is finished because machines know the facts. School was never about the facts.