With AI tutors underperforming the expectations of their creators and kids feeling increasingly negative about artificial intelligence, there is an opportunity and a mandate to pivot edtech towards humanity. What does that mean and what would it look like? Here is how I think about it.

Pivoting edtech towards humanity means using the power of technology to align one human’s desire to learn with another human’s desire to teach.

For Example

The physical classroom.

A bunch of people want to learn. A bunch of people want to teach. Until we connect them in time and space, those people are misaligned, their desire wasted. The technology of the physical classroom brings those desires into alignment.

Digital media.

As a new teacher, I noticed kids had a desire to learn how math connected to the world outside the classroom. I had a desire to teach them about those connections but very little ability to do so because the world outside of the classroom was outside and we were inside. The technology of digital projectors and cameraphones let me capture the world outside the classroom and bring it inside for our analysis. Technology brought our desires to learn and teach into alignment.

For Counterexample

If you ever have the feeling that edtech isn’t all that interested in humanity, it’s frequently because:

Edtech companies try to align human desire to the power of technology.

Edtech companies often take a particular technology as the answer and then retrofit teaching and learning into the question. This is why, for years, various companies insisted that teaching is something very close to playing a video of an explanation, which makes “just play YouTube videos” seem like the answer to the question “why is teaching hard?”

Edtech companies ignore second-order effects.

A student feels like their class is moving a little slower than they’d like. An edtech company then suggests having every kid learn on computers which let them work at different paces. The company ignores the second-order effect that “kids also like learning together and now they can’t.”

Misalignments That Interest Me Currently

Kids want to work on paper and it’s hard for teachers to know what they’re doing.

Teachers struggle to support a student’s thinking if it isn’t visible. Lots of thinking happens on paper and teachers often lack the time necessary to review and respond to it. How can we make that paper-based learning more legible for more teachers?

Coaches want to support teachers and teachers want their support.

Coaches often have too many teachers on their roster to support with model lessons and walkthroughs. Also, many teachers want support but not in the form of a model lesson or walkthrough. The desire to give and receive support are misaligned here.

Teachers want support in leading whole-class discussions.

Whole-class discussion is some of the most satisfying work for teachers and productive learning for students. But it is very hard work. Misaligned.

Caregivers want to support their kids but don’t know how.

Many parents and caregivers want to do more to support their kids’ learning than they do currently. But they often lack visibility into student learning and may need some education themselves. The reports that schools send home are frequently summative, low resolution, and a waste of ink or pixels overall. Teacher emails are much more useful but time-consuming for the teacher. What can schools and edtech companies do to help align caregivers, teachers, and kids here?

Who will do this work?

I could point to dozens of people doing this work of pivoting edtech towards humanity. They are exceptional. Many of them are my coworkers. Common to each of them is an excitement for new technologies and a desire to understand the work of teachers and the lives of students that I can only describe as “insatiable.” If that’s you, let me know what you’re working on in the comments.

Featured Comments

My obituary for Khanmigo and AI tutors inspired so many of you to share your own stories of grief. This newsletter is here for you. This was a common interesting interaction. From deep within their grieving process, someone would ask:

What’s the alternative? If Khanmigo doesn’t work, what’s the Plan B?

I’d point out the effect of Saga’s tutoring interventions in Chicago Public Schools as one of many interventions that has had a positive effect on student learning. Still grieving, this person would respond that this intervention is “difficult to implement at scale.”

This is such a strange standard for evaluating interventions in education. It is very true that good things are often difficult and expensive while useless things are often easy and cheap. Many people mistake this fact as an argument for doing useless things! (My colleague Chris Blackett develops this idea more at Talent Lab.)

Mae Baltz mentions another kind of subsidy Khanmigo frequently received: administrative mandate.

As a teacher in one of the areas that received money for Khanmigo I was asked to have my students interact with Khanmigo at least 10 times per month (each student).

In spite of those mandates, Khan Academy reported yesterday that “only around 15% of students who have access to Khanmigo engage with it.” That indicates pretty serious misalignment.

Katelynn Petersen describes the difference between AI and human tutors. Please write this down somewhere!

As soon as I started hearing about tutors being replaced by AI, I knew that the people responsible for such nonsense had never tutored a day in their life. 40% is remembering to ask about the novel they are writing, the tea they spilled about their friends, or the language test they’ve been studying for all year. 40% of my time is spent just building confidence and reassuring students they’re doing the right thing. 20% is actually teaching math.

Odds & Ends

¶ I have very little to say about Khan Academy’s new venture, announced just before I posted my obituary last week. An edtech visionary is stymied by traditional education and retreats to the friendlier terrain of corporate e-learning. Am I talking about the $10,000 degree Khan Academy will offer in partnership with ETS and TED? Or am I talking about the $7,000 degree Udacity offered in partnership with Georgia Tech after their disastrous experience trying to support college freshmen 13 years ago. Answer: yes. Hop in the time machine, kids. NB: Read Glenda Morgan’s pre-mortem or John Warner’s polemic.

¶ Marc Watkins writes about the same crisis of purpose in higher ed that I am seeing in a local eighth-grade class.

It’s easy to dismiss lazy students or burned-out teachers turning to AI, as many seem to do in the comment sections of social media posts, where we hear a litany of solutions from folks that range from bluebooks to oral exams to entire technology bans. But AI isn’t simply a crisis in assessment. No, the true crisis here is purpose.

¶ A couple of tremendous writers and thinkers take on the AI chatbot tutor’s promise of “infinite patience.” First, John Warner talks about his gratitude for the finite patience of his teachers.

Some of my most important formative educational experiences involved some teacher or authority figure losing patience with me.

Second, Julia Freeland Fisher asks, in a world of infinite patience, “whose while are you worth”:

AI’s champions often laud it as “infinitely patient.” AI’s unerring support is undoubtedly powerful, especially when time and resources are scarce. But it falls short of the experience that accompanies real patience: not just material support, but the feeling you are worth someone else’s while.

¶ I’ve worked in curriculum development for over a decade and this comment from Stanford’s Sam Wineburg on Justin Reich’s podcast earlier this year is a really rare insight.

Ultimately, curricula are not for kids. Curricula are for the teachers. And if the teachers don’t feel exuberant and don’t feel ennobled by being the mediators and the adapters of those curricula, they can be the best and most thought-out curricula in the world, but they’re ultimately going to find dust on some shelf.

¶ I’ll have more to say about the digital backlash someday. For now, I’ll let it suffice to say three things.

1. I think the coalitions that are forming are among the wackiest I’ve ever seen on any issue.

2. As a parent, I wish schools would scrutinize their use of edtech more closely.

3. I think the edtech companies that understand teaching and learning, that prioritize the humanity of teachers and learners, are probably going to be fine.

Once upon a time all conversations were private.

Two people in dialogue. A small group in a debate. What was said only left the room if someone decided it should.

For all of human history until two decades ago, private communication was the default. Words traveled as far as our voices could carry them. Or, if we chose, we wrote them down in formats with the intention of distribution.

The internet changed this. What was shared between two people could now be observed and reshared by the world. Our feelings, personal information, and who we talked to became data distributed to corporations, governments, and agencies beyond our control. With our explicit-ish consent on social media, and without it through widespread surveillance in support of ad-based models and suspicious states.

We've gone from a world that's default private to a world that's default public. Lured by the ever-present promise of infinite scale, human interaction shifted from private exchange to public arena. Even when we think what we're doing is private. No one agreed to this except through byzantine terms of use none of us read.

The performative cultures, insincere provocations, and broken social contracts that surround us today are the result.

Why we need dark forests

This was the tension I felt in 2019 when I wrote "The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet." I'd grown up on the early web where message boards, blogs, and a less centralized internet made a degree of privacy the assumed state of things. But the internet I wrote about seven years ago had become something else: a battleground where being visible meant being exposed.

Back then I observed that I and a growing number of others were moving "into dark forests to avoid the fray." Dark forests were group chats, private spaces, and podcasts that had more in common with the physical world than with the internet we knew. Wary of being watched, afraid of being taken out of context, and tired of threats from trolls and adversaries, people changed how they showed up.

That trend has accelerated. We now live in a world where everything public feels like an ad and the only things that feel real are private. We use the public internet to make money and achieve social status, accepting that being open online also means being less safe.

Why we need privacy

There's a powerful book from 2020 by Oxford philosopher Carissa Veliz called Privacy Is Power that explains why this matters. She writes:

"Privacy is about being able to keep certain intimate things to yourself — your thoughts, your experiences, your conversations, your plans. Human beings need privacy to be able to unwind from the burden of being with other people. We need privacy to explore new ideas freely, to make up our own minds. Privacy protects us from unwanted pressures and abuses of power."

What I felt personally, Veliz diagnoses politically. When the primary means of distributing information become less safe, we all suffer. Through the demands of public performance, tyranny reigns.

What's true of individuals is also true of groups. Trust requires believing that values and desires are shared. New ideas need to be debated privately before being scrutinized publicly. Ideas among people can grow even bigger when they aren’t immediately broadcast to all.

We've gotten so used to the default of thinking infinite scale is a good thing, we've come to think of privacy as a bad thing. But wanting privacy isn't a retreat. Craving more space for your ideas doesn’t mean you're doing something dangerous. Privacy is about having agency over your own thoughts and words, and how far they spread. Privacy is about control.

The missing middle

DFOS is an attempt to build the missing middle. The space where creative projects and culture get made (see earlier essays here and here). A space for the groups and communities that the current internet doesn't understand because they don't want to play today's attention games. Spaces that feel more like the physical world than the scaled internet we increasingly avoid.

We think of these as shared private internets. De-scaled spaces that take advantage of all the powerful tools of the web while intentionally limiting unwanted reach. 

We're using software to make this, but the goals aren't technical. They're applied philosophy. The values and experiences of how we want to live — safe, secure, connected — expressed as implements that help us get there.

When we're stuck between what we don't want and what we can't have, somebody needs to break the dam. Probably a lot of somebodies. Eventually, instead of choosing between one or the other, there’s a better third thing. And just maybe, over time, a world where choosing more privacy doesn’t mean choosing less power.

We need shared private internets. Not because we want more technology or scale. Exactly the opposite. We want more time with each other. We want to feel safe. We want to be ourselves, whoever we are.

“I believe in an old-fashioned virtue called Doing the Freakin’ Work. Read the book, not the summary. Write the piece, not the prompt. Suffer like the artist you are. It ain’t easy, but if it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing.”

Yes, AI is changing things in the corporate world, but let’s be clear: The humans are driving the actual change. McClatchy proves it.

Journalist Natasha Singer reported this story from McPherson, Kansas. It appeared in The New York Times, March 29, 2026

Inge Esping, the principal of McPherson Middle School, has spent years battling digital devices for children’s attention.

Four years ago, her school in McPherson, Kan., banned student cellphones during the school day. But digital distractions continued. Many children watched YouTube videos or played video games on their school-issued Chromebook laptops. Some used school Gmail accounts to bully fellow students.

In December, the middle school asked all 480 students to return the Chromebooks they had freely used in class and at home. Now the school keeps the laptops, which run on Google’s Chrome operating system, in carts parked in classrooms. Children take notes mostly by hand, and laptops are used sparingly, for specific activities assigned by teachers.

“We just felt we couldn’t have Chromebooks be that huge distraction,” said Ms. Esping, 43, Kansas’ 2025 middle school principal of the year. “This technology can be a tool. It is not the answer to education.”

McPherson Middle School no longer gives students their own Chromebooks to use in school and take home. The laptops are now kept in classroom carts and used only for specific activities assigned by teachers.

McPherson Middle School, about an hour’s drive from Wichita, is at the forefront of a new tech backlash spreading in education: Chromebook remorse.

For years, giants like Apple, Google and Microsoft have fiercely competed to capture the classroom and train schoolchildren on their tech products in the hopes of hooking students as lifelong customers. For more than a decade, tech companies have urged schools to buy one laptop per child, arguing that the devices would democratize education and bolster learning. Now Google and Microsoft, along with newcomers like OpenAI, are vying to spread their artificial intelligence chatbots in schools.

But after tens of billions of dollars of school spending on Chromebooks, iPads and learning apps, studies have found that digital tools have generally not improved students’ academic results or graduation rates. Some researchers and organizations like UNESCO even warn that overreliance on technology can distract students and impede learnin

Schools in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Michigan that once bought devices for each student are now re-evaluating heavy classroom technology use. And Chromebooks, the laptops most popular with U.S. schools, have emerged as a focal point. School leaders, educators and parents described the laptop curbs as an effort to refocus schooling on skills like student collaboration and conversation.

“We’re not going back to stone tablets,” said Shiloh Vincent, the superintendent of McPherson Public Schools. “This is intentional tech use.”

The classroom device pullback is the latest sign of a growing global reckoning over how tech giants and their products have upended childhood, adolescence and education.

In a landmark verdict last week, a jury found the social media company Meta and the Google-owned YouTube liable for hooking and harming a minor. More than 30 states have limited or banned student cellphone use at school. Last year, Australia began requiring social media companies to disable the accounts of children under 16, a move that other countries are considering.

Now children’s groups and educators concerned about screen time are turning their attention to school-issued laptops and learning apps. Parents are flocking to support efforts, like Schools Beyond Screens and the Distraction-Free Schools Policy Project, to vet and limit school tech.

At least 10 states, including Kansas, Vermont and Virginia, have recently introduced bills to restrict students’ screen time, require proof of safety and efficacy for school tech tools or allow parents to opt their child out of using digital devices for learning. And Utah recently passed a law that would require schools to provide monitoring systems for parents to see which websites their children had visited — and how much time they spent — on school devices.

Some parents are particularly concerned about YouTube, saying the platform has steered children to inappropriate videos on school devices. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, recently expressed concern that one of his school-age sons had watched YouTube videos of manosphere podcasters on his school laptop.

“It was his school device,” Mr. Newsom said during a podcast interview this month. “It was YouTube. It was the Chromebook and all these algorithms.

Google said it provided tools for schools to lock students’ Chromebook screens, restrict the content they saw, manage their YouTube access and disable Chromebooks after school hours. The company said it also turned off YouTube by default for K-12 students with school-issued Google accounts.

In a small town surrounded by wheat fields, McPherson Middle School serves sixth through eighth graders in a red brick schoolhouse built in 1938. In science class, eighth graders sit at vintage lab tables next to cabinets brimming with old microscopes. The school auditorium still has its original wooden seating.

“We already have a little bit of an old-school vibe for sure,” said Ms. Esping, now in her fourth year as principal.

She is also revisiting years-old school tech decisions.

In 2016, as part of the national trend, administrators at McPherson decided to buy a $225 Chromebook for every middle schooler. Google had introduced the low-cost laptops five years earlier, with a pitch that the tech would help equalize learning opportunities and equip students with vital career skills.

“The individual use of Chromebooks is a way to empower students to maximize their full potential,” the middle school’s device policy explained in 2016.

School leaders were enthusiastic.

“The general idea was: Students are going to be more engaged because it’s online — and how exciting for them!” Ms. Esping recalled.

To capitalize on the Chromebooks, the middle school invested in online textbooks and learning apps. But administrators, parents and students found that some of the platforms seemed too gamelike or did not work as advertised.

The coronavirus pandemic only increased school reliance on tech tools. In 2021, Chromebook shipments to schools more than doubled to nearly 16.8 million, compared with shipments in 2016, according to Futuresource Consulting, a market research firm.

When Ms. Esping took over as principal in 2022, she worried that rampant tech use was hindering learning. So the school banned student cellphones.

Online bullying and disciplinary incidents quickly decreased, she said. But online distractions continued.

Some students became so hooked on playing video games on their Chromebooks that teachers had difficulty getting them to concentrate on their schoolwork, administrators and teachers said.

Students also sent mean Gmail messages or set up shared Google Docs to bully classmates with comments. Hundreds of children logged on to Zoom meetings where they made fun of their peers, teachers and students said.

The school blocked Spotify and YouTube on school laptops. Then administrators stopped students from messaging one another on school Gmail.

Even then, some educators said they were spending so much time policing student Chromebook use that it was detracting from teaching. Some parents complained their children were spending hours playing video games on their school-issued devices.

Although the idea of taking back students’ Chromebooks seemed unorthodox, given U.S. schools’ deep reliance on Google’s sprawling education platform, the middle school went ahead. The changes took effect in January.

On one recent morning, school formally began with the Pledge of Allegiance, broadcast over school loudspeakers. Homeroom teachers then led group sessions on organizational and interpersonal skills to help children navigate life without their own laptops.

Homeroom topics have included tips for students on using paper planners for school assignments and doing homework during school hours. (Students who want to practice things like extra math problems online can borrow Chromebooks from the school library to take home.)

Teachers have also taught students how to play board and card games like Scattergories and Uno.

The new laptop minimalism has also changed core courses.

During a recent English class on writing thesis statements, Jenny Vernon, the teacher, gave seventh graders a choice. They could answer questions by hand on bright salmon-colored paper or use a class Chromebook. Most students chose the paper.

In a sixth-grade lesson on fractions, a teacher asked the class to convert three-twentieths into a percentage. Students each worked on the problem on small dry-erase boards. They balanced the boards on their heads to indicate they were ready to be called on.

Computer science classes promote purposeful tech use. In one recent lesson, students used Chromebooks to program sensors and LED lights.

“It’s coding the physical world,” said Courtney Klassen, the computing teacher. “It’s not just staring at the screen.”

Some students have welcomed the changes.

Jade LeGron, 13, said curtailing Chromebooks had been “super beneficial” because students had stopped fighting with teachers over video games and had less opportunity “to be mean to each other.”

Sarah Garcia, also 13, said spending less time online had prompted students to talk more. “Since we don’t have our Chromebooks in front of our face,” she said, “most people now interact with their, like, peers and stuff.”

The school is part of a trend. In Wichita, Marshall Middle School is trying “tech-free” Fridays. In January, the Kansas Senate introduced a school device bill that would prohibit laptops and tablets in kindergarten through fifth grade — while restricting device use for middle schoolers to just one hour during the school day.

Schools like McPherson say they are not just curbing Chromebooks to reduce children’s screen time. They are also aiming to refocus learning on child development, student-teacher interactions and old-fashioned fun.

“They’ve learned how to make darts again!” Ms. Esping exclaimed, pointing up at a student-made dart jutting out from a school hallway ceiling. “They are going back to the old ways of being ornery.”