The Real Value of AI in Education: Returning Teachers to Teaching
For the last 20 years, every conversation about technology in education followed the same script: A new tool arrives, we fear it will replace teachers, we ban it, and then we slowly adopt it as a glorified textbook.
Artificial Intelligence is different. Not because it is smarter, but because for the first time, technology can do what good teachers have always tried to do and never had time for….namely to teach every child as if he or she were the only child in the room.
From Mass Education to Personal Education
Our current school system was originally designed in the industrial age for an industrial need. It was designed to educate many children efficiently. One teacher, with 25-30 students, one lesson plan, one pace, one test.
But, as we know, no two children learn the same way.
One child understands fractions visually. Another needs a story. Another needs to fail five times before it clicks. In a class of 30, a teacher knows this, but cannot act on it every minute of every day. There is simply not enough time.
This is the first and most profoundly important value of AI – the personalization at scale.
Just imagine a classroom where a student struggling with algebra doesn’t have to raise his/her hand in shame. The AI tutor notices he is stuck on step 2, not step 5, and gently re-explains it in a different way, with an example based on basketball because it knows the student loves basketball. It has infinite patience. It never sighs.
A student who is gifted doesn’t have to sit bored waiting for the class to catch up. The AI recognizes that the student mastered the material in 10 minutes and automatically offers the student a deeper challenge.
The AI response is “great, you got it, now can you prove why it works?” or “want to see how this math is used to build video games?”
A student learning English can ask the same question in Hebrew, Spanish, or Haitian Creole and get an answer in the language he dreams in, while slowly building academic English.
This is not science fiction. Platforms like Khan Academy’s Khanmigo, Duolingo, and others are already doing this. In fact a 2023 Stanford study found that students using an AI tutor improved their learning outcomes by 30% compared to traditional instruction alone, not because the AI was smarter than the teacher, but because it allowed for deliberate practice tailored to each child.
AI doesn’t replace differentiation. It finally makes differentiation possible in ways never before imaginable.
Restoring the Teacher to Their Real Job
The greatest fear teachers have is whether AI will replace them
The honest response is that AI will replace the parts of the teaching job which the teacher never wanted to do anyway.
Ask any great teacher how they spend their time. Less than 50% is actual teaching. The rest is:
- Grading 120 essays
- Writing lesson plans at 11 PM
- Doing attendance and tedious paperwork
- Answering the same parent email 20 times
- Creating three versions of the same worksheet
AI is exceptional at administrative cognitive labor. It can grade and give feedback: Not just a score, but instant, specific feedback:
For example – you say to the student “your thesis is strong, but your second paragraph needs evidence. Here is how you could strengthen it.” The student gets feedback while he still cares, not two weeks later.
A teacher can say, “create a 7th-grade science reading on ecosystems at a 5th-grade reading level for my struggling readers and at a 9th-grade level for my advanced readers, with 5 questions for each,” and have it in 20 seconds.
By using AI, the teacher detects early warning signs: AI can analyze patterns — attendance, grades dropping, less participation, language in assignments — and flag to a counselor that a student might be disengaged, anxious, or falling behind long before a report card is issued.
What does this do? It gives teachers back their most precious resource – time for relationships. The time to sit with the shy, introverted or withdrawn student at lunch. The time to call a parent not to complain, but to say something good. The time to actually mentor, inspire, and see a child.
AI will not replace teachers. But teachers who use AI will replace teachers who don’t.
Teaching Skills That Actually Matter for the AI World
We are preparing children for a world that no longer exists if we only teach them to memorize facts that AI can retrieve in one second.
The value of AI is that it forces education to finally focus on what is essential for the teaching learning process.
By using AI technology, we focus on critical thinking over information recall. For example, of if we instruct a student to “write an essay on the causes of WWII,” which ChatGPT can do in 5 seconds, we can now ask: “here are two different AI-generated essays on WWII, which one is more biased and why?
We teach students to be editors and thinkers, not encyclopedias.
Human skills such as empathy, collaboration, leadership, resilience, ethical reasoning, and creativity are those which AI cannot easily address. A machine can write a poem, but it has never felt heartbreak. It can make a picture, but it has never felt awe. Our job is to help children become more deeply human.
AI literacy is knowing how to prompt, how to verify, and how to use AI ethically. It is now as fundamental as reading and math. A student who graduates without knowing how to work with AI is like a student who graduated in 1995 without knowing how to use the internet.
The Dangers We Must Be Honest About
To talk about the value of AI without talking about its risks would be shortsighted and irresponsible. AI in education has three (and possible more) real dangers:
The first relates to what is referred to as the “equity gap”. This means that if only wealthy private schools get good AI tutors, the achievement gap will explode. The value only happens if we ensure access for every child, including in Jewish day schools, public schools, and under-resourced communities.
The next relates to privacy and data. Children’s data is sacred. We cannot feed their learning disabilities, behavioral issues, and personal essays into systems that sell that data. Schools need strict policies regarding the privacy and the use of data in the public domain.
Finally, the illusion of knowing is the biggest risk that students undertake when using AI to avoid thinking. If a student uses AI to do his homework, he didn’t learn — he outsourced his struggle. And struggle is where learning happens. We must teach AI as a tutor, not a ghostwriter. The rule should be: that AI can explain it to you, but it cannot do it for you.
Conclusion: “The Sukkah Principle”
The best way to understand AI in education is through the principle of the Sukkah.
The sukkah is temporary. The house is permanent. AI is the sukkah — it is a temporary structure, a tool, a shade. It is not the house. The house is the teacher-student relationship, the character development, the community.
We should build the best sukkah possible — use the best AI tools to provide shade, protection, and personal support for every learner.
But we should never mistake the sukkah for the house. At the end of the day, a child will not remember the AI that graded his paper. But might remember the teacher who believed in him when he didn’t believe in himself.
Use AI generated learning and teaching with caution and wisdom; and remember that he value of AI in education, is not artificial intelligence at all. Its value is that it allows us to finally provide authentic, human education — for every single child.
And that is a value worth investing in.
