Educating Kids in the Age of A.I. | The Ezra Klein Show

I honestly don’t know how I should be educating my kids. A.I. has raised a lot of questions for schools. Teachers have had to adapt to the most ingenious cheating technology ever devised. But for me, the deeper question is: What should schools be teaching at all? A.I. is going to make the future look very different. How do you prepare kids for a world you can’t predict?

And if we can offload more and more tasks to generative A.I., what’s left for the human mind to do?

Rebecca Winthrop is the director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. She is also an author, with Jenny Anderson, of “The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better.” We discuss how A.I. is transforming what it means to work and be educated, and how our use of A.I. could revive — or undermine — American schools.

0:00 Intro
3:03 The future of education?
11:20 Modes of engagement
17:27 Personalizing education
26:25 The case for A.I. in schools
35:09 Who gets left behind?
46:07 How A.I. can increase equity
49:35 Becoming more human
55:54 Willpower, literacy, and regulation
01:01:10 Advice for parents
01:05:20 Book recommendations

Read the full transcript here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/0....5/13/opinion/ezra-kl

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You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/articl....e/ezra-klein-show-bo