Teachers at the crossroads
We ask teachers to prepare students for an unpredictable, AI-infused, climate-volatile world. Yet we treat those same educators as if their job is to execute instructions, not invent solutions.
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John Moravec
Articles and research by John Moravec.
Is the end nigh for white collar workers?
It’s almost amusing (if it weren’t so tragic) how each new wave of AI panic gets dressed up as breaking news. “AI could kill millions of jobs,” the experts say, as if this were a revelation.
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Activism as learning: When students teach the system a lesson
Activism can be one of learning’s most authentic expressions. It explores how organizing, civic participation, and speaking truth to power develop knowledge and agency.
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Break the rules that break us
In classrooms built for quiet, success often means staying inside the lines, even as the world outside demands we redraw them. Today’s schools reward silent conformity over courageous inquiry, sending an implicit message to learners: don’t ask too much, don’t reach too far.
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The missing planet
A school day begins with a bell. Students move from worksheets to whiteboards while forests burn and rivers shrink outside.
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How did we get from “schools kill creativity” to “AI kills critical thinking in schools?”
When Sir Ken Robinson delivered his now-iconic TED Talk in 2006, proclaiming that “schools kill creativity,” he struck a chord that continues to reverberate through education systems worldwide. Robinson’s argument that our schools systematically squash imagination in favor of conformity and compliance sparked a movement for more creative, learner-centered approaches.
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Learning together, teaching together
In most schools today, students are grouped strictly by age, progressing year by year in parallel cohorts. While this structure simplifies scheduling and curriculum delivery, it also narrows the social and cognitive range of experiences available to learners.
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Learning at the edge of networks
In early 2020, as COVID-19 swept across the globe, the world was confronted with a challenge that no single expert, institution, or government could tackle alone. The response to the crisis demanded a convergence of diverse insights, rapid experimentation, and global collaboration to develop new knowledge.
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Invisible learning is an organic process: Breathing, taking root, and becoming one’s self
Most learning unfolds as an organic process: quiet, continual, and often unseen. Like breath or the silent growth of roots, it extends beneath the surface of formal schooling, leaving little trace on a transcript.
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Quantum computing and the future of education
Quantum computing will disrupt education more profoundly than AI. Explore its potential, risks, and what policymakers must do to guide it responsibly.
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No more boxes: Learning in ecosystems
Learning does not fit neatly into classrooms, schedules, and institutional categories. Meaningful learning is exploratory, connected, and shaped by life beyond school.
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Learning at the intersection of agency and self-efficacy
At the heart of meaningful education is a powerful idea: learners thrive when they are trusted to shape their learning and believe they are capable of success. This fusion of agency (being afforded real choices) and self-efficacy (believing in one’s ability to act on those choices) transforms education from routine compliance into purposeful growth.
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Kids are people, too
When students are trusted to co-create the structures and rhythms of school life, the outcomes are measurable and lasting.
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In the absence of hope, we must build communities of trust
In many places, unfortunately including my home country of the United States, learning is no longer nurtured. It is managed.
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1.0 schools cannot teach 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 … kids
In one classroom, a student copies notes about a centuries-old war. Outside that school, they build game mods, edit videos for social media, and debate politics in global online forums.
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Does the modern university end at AI?
AI Trends in Higher Education,” hosted by Emerald Publishing and the Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL), March 26,.
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Educating for a shared planet
We are living through overlapping global crises: climate breakdown, mass displacement, ecological collapse, rising authoritarianism, and digital fragmentation. These forces are not distant trends; they shape everyday life.
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Building futures we cannot yet imagine
Education is teaching yesterday to children who will live in tomorrow. While medicine rewrites genomes and technology engineers intelligence, schools remain firmly anchored to the past.
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