If you’ve been following my work over the past few months, you already know this:

I’m deeply interested in—and increasingly cautious about—where technology, especially AI, is taking us.

What keeps me up at night isn’t whether students will use AI to write research papers (though that concern is real and worth addressing).

What concerns me far more are the existential questions.

Questions about meaning.
Questions about identity.

Questions about what it will mean to be human in a world increasingly shaped by non-human intelligence.

You’ve heard me say this for a while now: We are standing at an inflection point.

Not a subtle one.
Not a slow one.

A monumental one.

AI already outperforms college graduates in many cognitive tasks. By the end of this decade, we may be staring down artificial superintelligence. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, predicts artificial general intelligence—AI that can learn and improve itself—within four years.

What this means is that:

The jobs our students are preparing for don’t exist yet.
The skills we’ve taught for decades are becoming obsolete in real time.

Schooling (and everything else) is about to undergo a radical change and if we do not think deeply, wisely, and well about this now, we may not have the chance once the real change occurs

But here’s the thing:

I’m not a doomsayer.

I actually believe this moment holds the greatest opportunity for educational renewal we’ve seen in generations.

I believe there is a chance to reclaim what has always been Good, True, and Praiseworthy in education all along

THAT is the hope I cling to in these uncertain times

This isn’t an abstract question for me

I believe it is the central educational question of our time.

Every conference I attend now has AI sessions baked in—usually focused on tools, platforms, guardrails, and policies.

And to be clear: we must think seriously about how schools will use AI.

But I want to suggest a different starting point.

Yes, from a pure information-delivery standpoint, advanced AI will be objectively superior to human teachers.

But I’ve been saying this long before ChatGPT ever existed:

If education is merely about transmitting information and assessing retention, schools are already obsolete.

Here’s the liberating truth we’ve forgotten:

Education was never meant to be that.

Somewhere along the way, we made a catastrophic mistake.

We elevated cognition and quietly sidelined the heart, the hands, the body, and the relational self.

We placed students in rows.
We asked them to sit still.
We delivered content.
And we measured how well they could give it back.

For over a century, we’ve largely accepted this as “just the way school works.”

John Dewey warned us about this nearly a hundred years ago in Experience and Education. Not all experiences, he argued, are educative. Some are actively mis-educative.

What happens to students in school doesn’t just shape what they learn.

It shapes who they become.

When students spend years disconnected from their bodies, their creativity, and one another—passively consuming rather than actively engaging—those are not neutral choices.

Ironically, we worry AI will rob students of their agency and humanity, while ignoring the fact that much of modern schooling has been doing precisely that for decades.

The deeper problem with schooling-as-content-delivery is that it forgets what it means to be human.

We were never meant to be brains on sticks.

We are embodied, relational, meaning-seeking beings—formed by stories, cultures, relationships, and loves.

Learning doesn’t happen only in the mind.

It happens through our bodies.
Through emotion.
Through relationship.
Through lived experience.

If education is going to become truly educational again—especially in an age of advanced intelligence—it must return to doing the work of human formation.

I have long said (here and everywhere) that the work of education should first and foremost always be about:

This is the heart of the answer. Education as not as data consumption but as human flourishing

Formation—not information—will determine who thrives.

In an artificial age, the world does not need content deliverers.

It needs educators who cultivate the deepest, most authentic humanity of the students in their care

Not by guessing what jobs will exist.

But by cultivating the irreplaceable humanity—the heart, the soul, the rightly ordered loves—that will matter no matter what the future holds.

This is your sacred work and the work you were called to do when you entered education

The work you're doing—educating young people in this moment of unprecedented change—is sacred work.

You're not just managing classrooms and curricula.

You're shaping the future of humanity itself.

In an age when machines can do almost everything, the cultivation of authentic humanity becomes the most critical work on the planet.

And you—YOU—are entrusted with that work.

You don't have to carry it alone.

You don't have to figure it out in isolation.

You don't have to pretend you have all the answers.

But you do have to decide:

Will you keep doing what you've always done and hope it somehow prepares students for a radically different future?

Or will you join the transformation—alongside a community of educators and leaders who are asking the same questions, wrestling with the same challenges, and refusing to settle for schools that prepare students for a world that no longer exists?

The future belongs to those who lean into their humanity.

Let's help our students do exactly that.

Together.

Scott Martin

Here's what I know after two decades of reimagining education:

The leaders who transform schools don't do it alone.

They're part of communities that challenge their thinking, support their journey, and refuse to let them quit.

That's exactly why I created the Flourishing School Leaders Community Cohort.

Our first session (January 30) is titled: "How to Lead a Future-Proof School: Future-Proofing Education Through Meaning, Purpose, Innovation, and Community."

We're going to spend 60 minutes wrestling with exactly this question: How do we educate for a future we can't predict?

Then we'll spend the next eleven months diving deeper into:

This isn't just professional development.

It's a year-long journey with a community of school leaders who refuse to accept that the way things are is the way things have to be.

Normally $500 for the year.

Enroll by January 25 for just $415 (essentially two free months)

Leadership teams of 3+ save even more: $400 per person

That's less than $35/month for:

First session: January 30, 2:00 PM CST

P.S. If you're still on the fence, ask yourself this: What will my school look like in 36 months if I keep doing exactly what I'm doing now? If that answer doesn't excite you, it's time to make a change. Join us: Flourishing School Leaders Cohort

P.P.S. The special pricing ends January 25. After that, it returns to $500. Don't let this opportunity pass. The question isn't whether you can afford to join—it's whether you can afford not to. Enroll now.