“Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.”
― George CarlinAI has exposed an uncomfortable reality: what teenagers are taught in school can now be done better by their phone.
Facts, simple math, essays, summaries, translations, even basic coding—these are no longer scarce skills. If education is about producing correct answers, AI has have already won.
So the real question is no longer what should students know?
It is what should they be capable of?
The Real Gap Isn’t Knowledge — It’s Agency
Modern schooling still trains students to:
follow instructions,
meet predefined criteria,
work individually,
avoid mistakes.
AI has wiped out the value of those traits.
What remains valuable is agency: the ability to decide, act, coordinate with others, and take responsibility when outcomes are uncertain.
Unfortunately, agency is precisely what school avoids teaching.
There are worse things than Conscription
Military training forces young people to:
solve problems in teams,
brief and be briefed,
analyze real situations,
manage logistics and resources,
maintain standards,
take pride in their work because others depend on it.
Mistakes have consequences. Standards matter. Responsibility is real.
That combination produces adults who function well in the real world—something many schools no longer do.
What Skills Still Matter in an AI World
AI can execute. Humans must decide.
The skills that still pay are:
decision-making under uncertainty,
teamwork and communication,
ownership of outcomes,
adaptability and learning speed,
pride in doing things properly.
AI can help with work. It cannot care about it.
What Teenagers Can Do Instead (or Alongside School)
The best skill-building environments share the same features: real stakes, real people, real consequences.
High-value options include:
real jobs with responsibility,
cadets, scouts, emergency or civil defense programs,
running a small business,
building or fixing things that must work,
coaching, mentoring, or leadership roles,
self-directed learning that produces real output.
The activity matters less than the pattern.
The Pattern That Works
Across all effective paths:
real stakes beat simulations,
teams beat solo performance,
output beats credentials,
responsibility beats permission.
If an activity lacks those, AI will eventually replace it.
The Bottom Line
Teenagers are not becoming obsolete.
But education that trains them only to answer questions they didn’t choose is.
In an AI world, the most valuable young people are those who can:
act without constant instruction,
work well with others,
make decisions with incomplete information,
take pride in doing things properly,
and recover from failure.
Those skills were never well taught in classrooms.
They are learned in the real world—by choice or by necessity.
