RTE summary ofThe Friction Our Children Need in the Age of AI, commentary, Washington Stand,
Writing from a Christian perspective, the author argues that much of modern technology is designed to remove effort, and that in education, effort is often the point. The piece builds on a presentation by Michael Marinaccio of the Center for Responsible Technology at an August 19 briefing hosted by the Alliance for Secure AI, where the author serves on the board.
The column cites a 2025 field experiment published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences involving nearly 1,000 high school math students. Students with access to a standard AI chatbot did better while they could use it, but when access was removed for a later exam, they scored 17 percent worse than students who never had it. A version built with learning safeguards largely avoided that drop. The author also points to education researcher Manu Kapur's work on productive failure, and to survey findings from Common Sense Media and Pew on how widely teens use AI for schoolwork.
The author's conclusion is that children should learn to think for themselves before they learn to hand that thinking off to a machine.
Why it matters
The study the column describes captures a distinction that is easy to miss: a tool can raise performance while students are using it and still weaken what they learn. It also shows that design matters, since the version with safeguards performed differently. Evaluating classroom technology means measuring learning over time, not just results in the moment.
This is RTE's summary. For the complete story, read it where it was originally published.
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