AI in Educationthe long line

Where the Question Comes From

I grew up in a family where the conversation kept circling one topic: how education forms a person, and how a learner forms themselves within it. The educator's self-awareness, what an educator owes the learner, what an exemplary educational posture looks like — those were the standing questions at the table.

This strand carries that questioning into the age of new technology. It is the oldest concern behind my research, and the one I expect to still be working on the longest — which is why it is treated here as a line, not a topic.

The Position

Most current debate asks how to use generative AI in teaching. This strand asks what comes before that: where AI belongs — and does not belong — within the structure of teaching and learning itself, drawing on Kant's philosophy of education and Freire's critical pedagogy.

The working criterion is the seam: education deliberately leaves gaps that the learner ought to cross by their own effort, because crossing them is how a person is formed. A use of AI that closes such a seam has not made learning more efficient — it has removed the learning. The evaluative question for any deployment is therefore not capability but placement: does the seam survive this particular use?

The same stance extends to cognitive environments in general: tools should scaffold rather than substitute the thinking of the person who uses them — in education, where the person being formed is a learner, the stakes of that distinction are highest.