🎥 Watch: Bill Gates explaining the internet to David Letterman (1995) – a reminder of how unfamiliar new technology once felt.
History Is Repeating Itself
In the late 1990s, teachers introduced the web with excitement. Lessons focused on how to “go online,” open Netscape, and find information. But the teaching stopped at the mechanics. It took years before digital literacy evolved into critical literacy — questioning sources, checking facts, and understanding bias.
Now, AI is following the same path.
Across schools, teachers are showing students how to write prompts, summarise text, or use a chatbot for revision. These are useful skills, but they are not pedagogy. They teach use, not understanding.
Teaching to the Tool Is Not Teaching for Thinking
Prompt writing is becoming the new “typing practice.” It feels practical and measurable, but it doesn’t build the reasoning, ethics, or creativity that define true digital learning.
Good pedagogy starts with curiosity and leads to critical thought. Students must learn not just to ask AI for answers, but to question its reasoning, verify its claims, and decide when AI should not be used at all.
If our lessons stop at functionality, we risk raising a generation of users rather than thinkers.
What the Internet Era Taught Us
- Curiosity must lead to critique.
Students should move beyond fascination and start asking: “Why does the AI think this?” “Who trained it?” “What’s missing?” - Don’t outsource thinking.
Search engines once made students skim; AI risks making them skip thinking altogether. We must bring back reasoning, reflection, and the human voice. - Teach ethics from the start.
Online safety lessons came years too late for the web. AI ethics — bias, plagiarism, consent — must be embedded now, not as a reaction later.
Why the Shift Must Happen Now
AI is advancing faster than curriculum reform. Students are already using it for homework, revision, and even creative writing. If we continue teaching “how to use the tool” instead of “how to think with it,” we’ll lose the chance to shape responsible, reflective learners.
The shift must happen now — from AI as assistance to AI as awareness.
Pedagogy must lead technology, not the other way around.
A Second Chance for Education
The internet gave us access to information. AI gives us access to reasoning — and that’s far more powerful. But power without understanding leads to dependence.
We have a second chance to get this right.
Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the web era.
Let’s teach students to question, to verify, and to use technology with integrity and imagination.
