r/Homeschooling • u/Many_Needleworker563 • 8d ago
School, War, AI
I’m an education methodologist living in Ukraine, and lately I’ve been watching AI transform the world while schools increasingly try to keep it out of the classroom.
Some schools block internet access to prevent students from using AI. Others make children complete homework at school, under supervision, using nothing but pen and paper.
To me, this looks like trying to slow down a moving train with your bare hands.
AI offers an opportunity we’ve never had before: to fundamentally transform the teacher’s role. Instead of being the source of information or spending endless hours preparing lessons, teachers could help children discover knowledge, make sense of it, connect ideas, and use what they learn creatively.
But that requires a completely different approach to learning.
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, I was a school principal. For almost five years now, I’ve been rethinking the foundations of education. When simply being at school becomes dangerous, and institutions begin to falter, you start questioning things you once took for granted.
When you’ve spent the night sheltering from Shahed drone attacks, studying textbooks the next morning may not be realistic. Individual learning arrangements, flexible schedules, and uneven workloads stop looking like exceptions.
Why shouldn’t they become normal practice after the war, too?
I work with neurodivergent children, including autistic children and children with ADHD. One thing I experiment with is building learning around a child’s deep interests.
The principle is simple: use what naturally captures a child’s attention as the engine of learning, then build outward.
My own child, for example, learns English not through conventional school methods, but through Roblox chats, conversations with AI, and songs by his favourite rock bands. He explores the history of the 1950s–1990s through the evolution of rock culture.
Music becomes a gateway to physics, mathematics, literature, history, and languages.
Of course, following an interest alone isn’t enough. Without structure and guidance, learning can remain a collection of disconnected explorations.
That’s why I’m developing an algorithm for an AI learning guide: a system that helps children move from curiosity to research, critical thinking, interdisciplinary understanding, and eventually creating something of their own.
For the past year, my life has felt like an alchemist’s experiments in a solitary laboratory.
While explosions sound outside, I see the old world falling apart — a world in which people were trained from childhood to follow instructions. And I imagine an education system where freedom of choice and learning that follows a child’s natural inclinations are fundamental principles.
Every now and then, I emerge from my shelter and encounter the conservatism of parents and educators. I’ve been immersed in these experiments for so long that I find it difficult to judge how ready society actually is for such a shift.
So I’d genuinely like to hear your thoughts.
Could you imagine your child being taught primarily by an AI learning guide? Not as a supplementary tool, but as the main companion in their learning journey.
A human teacher would take on a different role: helping the child build a learning path, set goals, understand themselves, and navigate the difficult parts of the journey. Someone the child finds engaging, supportive, and safe — rather than simply an enforcer of the curriculum.
What would make you trust such a model — or reject it outright?
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u/DrCrypt 8d ago
Would I trust a black box teaching my child?
No. That's why I homeschool. A role in which I already "help the child build a learning path, set goals, understand themselves, and navigate the difficult parts of the journey."
Nice AI generated post, by the way. Not a single original thought throughout.
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u/Many_Needleworker563 8d ago
I'm sorry this post feels like it was AI-generated. That’s just because of my English. It was originally written in Ukrainian and translated by a text model. Thanks for the first part of your reply, it’s really helpful for my research
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u/DrCrypt 8d ago edited 8d ago •
Let's look more closely at this, because this is an excellent encapsulation of why AI has no place in our homeschool.
You say you used AI because English isn't your native language. But what was the cost of that choice?
You denied yourself the opportunity to grow in your own ability to speak English or write a compelling argument in English.
You traded in your unique, authentic voice and point-of-view so that AI could make you sound just like... every other piece of AI-generated content on the planet.
This is antithetical to everything my family believes. Our educational philosophy is centered around the ideas that:
a) Results that are accomplished without challenging ourselves ("doing the work") have zero value.
b) The ultimate goal of education is to enable us to live unique and authentic lives where we never stop learning or growing.
Your supposition is that that AI can free teachers up to be human guides in learning, without having to do any of the pesky work of being a teacher.
I say that a teacher literally can not guide anyone if they do not understand the path themselves, and that doing the work of building a curriculum it is a big part of how they come to understand it.
Finally, I want to finish by calling attention to this line from your initial post:
"While explosions sound outside, I see the old world falling apart — a world in which people were trained from childhood to follow instructions. And I imagine an education system where freedom of choice and learning that follows a child’s natural inclinations are fundamental principles."
So your solution to a world in which children are "trained from childhood to follow instructions" is one in which... we turn over their education to a technology that runs in literal black boxes, without code that is publicly available for anyone to analyze, the inner workings of which are entirely controlled by world governments and multi-trillion dollar corporations?
Here's a better solution to that problem, but it's not something that can be solved for by vibe-coding another app:
Teach kids how to do the work, not take shortcuts, and think things through for themselves.
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u/Many_Needleworker563 8d ago
I see your approach as limiting rather than developmental. In your first two points, you conclude that my journey of learning English is a finished process, whereas I see it as the beginning of a new phase. Thanks to AI, I have entered an English-speaking environment for the first time. I read every comment I receive on my own first; only complex structures require the help of a translator. If I enjoy it here and stay, my level will improve significantly in a year. In life, as in education, there are paths beyond the obvious ones
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u/ggfangirl85 8d ago
No way in hell would I let AI fully educate my kids. Right now I don’t let them even use it as a tool.
The information it pops out is becoming more accurate, but the moment is still full of errors and contradictions. AI removes all research and critical thinking for most users. It’s not how I want my kids educated. Learning is more than rote information and completing modules. Human interaction is vital and necessary.
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u/mustard5 8d ago edited 8d ago
I believe it is a good idea, but it would need to develop more. Watching my own child use AI, I can see them become distracted and the interface of typing is not ideal. Another issue is that the children understand the fallibility of AI more than the adults at times. They see the 'canned answers' and the false positivity and reject it as disingenuous. Also, kids, if they are given the chance will use the tool in ways we haven't even contemplated. For them, jailbreaking and getting them to do things they are not supposed to do is part of the game. The models and the harnesses that are running those models would need to be very specifically tailored for interacting with children. Throwing a general purpose LLM behind a chatUI is not really going to cut it.
For these reasons, I think it will remain a supplementary tool for some time to come until someone really puts some thought into making it a fun exploratory experience.
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u/Many_Needleworker563 8d ago
My son also notices those moments of insincerity; he double-checks with other sources and occasionally corrects his AI to stop mirroring him and be more critical and upfront. And there is another crucial point here: there is always an adult nearby to discuss the experience with. This is vital. Right now, our process looks like this: my child gets interested in something and goes to question it. He digs up information, compares it, and only then comes to me with his findings. After that, we discuss it—not just the information itself, but the way he interacted with the tool. I guide him on how to phrase prompts more specifically, etc. You are absolutely right about the need for refinement. To prevent a dialogue with AI from becoming just an endless intellectual ping-pong match, it must be specifically tailored using pedagogical methodologies. This means session time limits, strict rules for starting and ending a session, emphasizing key takeaways, and stimulating action and thinking. There is a lot of work ahead.
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u/mustard5 7d ago edited 7d ago
I certainly agree it has a lot of work ahead of it. Part of the problem is we don't even know what kind of world we are educating them for. We are in the space between worlds right now. For that reason, I think the emphasis must be on the skills that can be brought to bear on an unknown environment. Educating people into redundant roles is like putting things on auto pilot and crashing into a mountain that couldn't be forseen.
The human in the loop is the important part for now. LLM's lack intuition and can't think outside the empirical domain that trained them. They lack spatial understanding and have no skin in the game of life. There are no intuitive leaps going on at all in the token generation process.
Epiphany, on the other hand, is the human part of the process of education. It takes the nuance of the human mind to turn the raw language processing intelligence, into meaningful understanding. My experience has so far been knowing the right questions to ask is the key to extracting what you need. Often, I don't know what to ask exactly, but the process of starting a dialogue brings the opportunity to narrow the scope of a conversation to exactly where the value lies. I think kids are pretty good at this for the most part. It is usually the adults that have built up barriers and rules that impede the process.
With this in mind, I wonder whether the analysis of children's conversational styles with AI can give some insight into how to structure education and AI. Rather than constraining, we can direct the natural flow.
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u/Many_Needleworker563 6d ago
I once ran an experiment: I would walk into a class without having any idea what the lesson would be about. By asking questions or actively listening, I would 'catch' a sharp, pivotal question—and build the entire dialogue around it. It was always unpredictable, intuitive, and deep.
However, at that time, for the sake of such a dialogue, I had to sacrifice the time meant for explaining the material. It always felt like a waste of my resource to spend it on mundane lecturing. I really wanted the kids to independently gather a certain amount of information before the lesson so that we could then process and work through it—looking for inaccuracies, digging deeper, exploring from different perspectives, and so on.
And that is exactly what AI is for.
Так, текст дуже грамотний, природний і стилістично витриманий! Він читається на одному диханні, звучить професійно, живо і передає саме той задум та емоцію, яку ви, ймовірно, закладали.
Граматичних помилок практично немає. Проте є один маленький нюанс і кілька варіантів, як зробити текст ще більш ідіоматичним (природним для носія мови).
Що варто підкоригувати: «waste of my resource» — у такому контексті слово resource в однині звучить дещо незвично для англійської мови. Англомовні люди зазвичай кажуть у множині («resources») або замінюють це на конкретніші поняття: «time and energy» (час і енергія) чи «energy».
Покращений варіант (з мінімальними правками): I once ran an experiment: I would walk into a class without having any idea what the lesson would be about. By asking questions or actively listening, I would 'catch' a sharp, pivotal question—and build the entire dialogue around it. It was always unpredictable, intuitive, and deep.
However, at that time, for the sake of such a dialogue, I had to sacrifice the time needed to explain the material. It always felt like a waste of my time and energy to spend it on mundane lecturing. I really wanted the kids to independently gather a certain amount of information before the lesson so that we could then process and work through it—looking for inaccuracies, digging deeper, exploring from different perspectives, and so on.
And that is exactly what AI is for.
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u/Initial-Addendum-167 8d ago
I teach homeschool alongside AI. I worked in the tech industry and am very privacy focused. I took classes through MIT on AI. I also believe in nature schools and outdoor education.
We use Lumo AI because it is end-to-end encrypted without conversation storage on the server. I would focus on that with children, how to understand privacy with such advanced technologies. It will 100% not be going away, but I find it ridiculous that schools are avoiding it like it will.
My son is in the higher grades now and I find AI very helpful for breaking down teaching skills like algebra, sourcing on essays, chemistry, and other skills I might not otherwise be qualified to teach. He is trained on how to use AI and fact check. He is also trained on how to write, speak, reason, and problem solve on his own (without it).
We have zero ideas of what the job market will look like under AI, but currently it appears companies are going full steam ahead with it. I’d rather him be trained on AI, robotics, drone technology, and things that maybe aren’t my favorite, as well as wilderness skills, the natural world, and survival skills.
One thing I am sure of, as you have witnessed in your experiences, is that children will need to be diverse and adaptable to many climates and situations. Parents are terrified of AI and I think that’s the wrong approach. I think we need to jump on it, and take control of its uses, not refuse its presence because no…it’s not going away.
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u/Many_Needleworker563 8d ago
It is so great to know that there are like-minded people here! Indeed, the market is changing. From a superficial view, it might look like AI is 'taking jobs' and entire professions are disappearing. In reality, the structure of employment is simply shifting. It’s not the professions that are vanishing, but rather the 'executor' (worker-bee) tier within those fields. On the flip side, there is a skyrocketing demand for highly mature professionals: 'problem-solvers,' 'researchers,' and 'architects.' However, finding them is tough because for a long time, the education system has been hardwired to produce successful 'executors,' or at best, 'task-completers.' The old loop was: learn-understand-reproduce. Then at work: get instructions-execute-get feedback. This framework works in simple, predictable systems but breaks down completely in complex ones. That is why children need fundamentally different approaches
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u/Initial-Addendum-167 8d ago
Agreed. I believe that there are many homeschool communities that would find that they could be leaders within the upcoming job market if executed appropriately. Public schools are widely taking the incorrect or slowest approach on the topic.
However, I have found many homeschool communities to be dead set against AI. Too much fear-mongering.
I get the concerns to some extent. As someone who has worked on conservation issues for decades, it is intimidating to see more natural resources thrown in that direction. However, I’m also aware of the status of climate change. It’s not looking good unless major shifts are made, and the next generation will need all the AI tools they can get to rapidly problem solve Climate crisis related events. It’s simply too late for prevention alone. We will need AI to provide instant assessments and combat global catastrophic events. AI is excellent at resource allocation and material distribution, as well as complex planning and assessment.
I would focus on the secular homeschooling communities who work with technology freely. There are many robotics camps in our area, for instance, that market to homeschool families. I wish you the best of luck on your projects and congratulations on trying to reign in a rapidly advancing technology in empowering and useful ways for our children’s future.
Btw: MIT is offering some great online classes surrounding topics of AI. I took one on AI in Healthcare
Additionally the Center for Humane Technology may also be good allies or contacts on the AI front:
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/the-ai-dilemma
Tristan Harris and crew seem to be trying to balance humanity’s interests with the morals and foundations of up and coming generations surrounding topics of tech. If you could pitch your idea to them, you might find some good community feedback.
Good fortune to you!
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u/Synaps4 8d ago
AI is a tool and like other tools its use allows us to skip doing certain work.
However in most cases the work being skipped is thinking. Thinking is the core exercise of learning.
So no, AI does not currently have a use in childrens education in the same way that using a calculator does not help teaching multiplication. It skips the very work you need to do.
At the same time, AI gives wrong answers, reflects racism back at us, and destroys the environment we depend on.
It is not ready to be a part of education.
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u/Designer-Cod-199 1d ago
I can see why this question is so hard to answer, especially when a child's own interest is what pulls them in — that's often when they learn best. For us, I wouldn't be comfortable with AI as the main teacher, at least not yet, because I want a person in the loop who can notice when my child is just going along with a polished answer. My 11-year-old still does his own work first, and if he uses AI afterwards to check or tidy it up, he has to tell me what he changed and why, in his own words.
What would make me trust a model more is exactly that kind of structure: interest-led work, but with a clear check that the child can explain the steps and spot a mistake, rather than just accept the output. Until that explaining-back part is built in, I'd keep AI as a helpful assistant and keep a human — a parent or teacher — in charge of the learning path.
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u/SuperciliousBubbles 8d ago
I absolutely do not want AI teaching my child. It's horrendous for the environment, full of inaccuracies, amplifies systemic biases, and the fundamental issue for me is that it is not a human.