Jackie Gallo is the founder of Roots Academy, a K-8 Maine school redefining what education can look like through place-based learning, deep focus and community connection.

We have confused preparing children for the future with accelerating them toward it.

Artificial intelligence can answer almost any question a child asks. That’s exactly why schools should spend less time worrying about teaching children to use AI, and more time teaching them to think, wonder and pay attention.

Every few weeks, someone asks me some version of the same question. “What should my child be learning now to prepare them to use AI when they’re older?”

It’s a reasonable concern from parents that their children will be left behind if they don’t keep pace with the technology. And if AI can already summarize books, write essays, solve equations and answer almost any factual question in seconds, should we change our curriculum to account for this?

I think this is the wrong question and the wrong approach. We’re overcorrecting toward technology while undervaluing the human capacities that become more valuable because of AI. Because the future won’t belong to the people who can get answers the fastest. It will belong to the people who know which questions are worth asking.

That’s because AI changes how we access information, but it doesn’t change how we make meaning from it. As answers become nearly limitless, the skills that become most valuable are attention, judgment, curiosity and the ability to stay with a problem long enough to understand it.

Those are deeply human skills. They aren’t learned by consuming more information. They’re cultivated through play, meaningful work, relationships and lived experience.

Many parents will tell you that attention is something their child lacks. But watch any child at one of our Maine tide pool beaches this summer. Within seconds of arriving, they will become completely absorbed. They won’t be memorizing marine biology facts, but they will be noticing, wondering and comparing. Testing ideas and revising them.

Without realizing it, they will practice the habits that underlie scientific thinking: observation, persistence and curiosity. Children aren’t born with short attention spans. They’re born with astonishing ones. The question is whether adults hold the space for them long enough for those attention spans to deepen and grow.

By middle school, we’re often asking children to sit still just as their brains and bodies are craving movement, challenge and independence. I’ve watched students spend days surfing, mountain biking and hiking. It’s the best pre-teen curriculum because when they fall off a surfboard or stalls on a rocky climb, in front of their peers, there’s no shortcut around the experience. They have to regulate frustration, trust their peers, solve problems and try again. Those moments build resilience, confidence and genuine connection in ways that few classroom projects can.

These experiences aren’t a break from learning. They are learning.

Too often, we separate academic skill from the very experiences that make academics meaningful. We prioritize productivity over purpose, memorization over observation and tasks over wonder. 

But children learn best when they’re invited to wrestle with real questions. When they have time to build something, take it apart, fail, rethink and try again. There is a beautiful sense of belonging and stewardship that I see in so many children who are trusted to contribute to their communities instead of simply reading about them.

Neuroscience and developmental psychology increasingly point in the same direction: children learn more deeply when they’re emotionally engaged, physically involved and solving meaningful problems. Attention isn’t something we demand from children; it’s something we can cultivate and protect by giving them experiences worth paying attention to.

That may be one of the greatest challenges of raising children today.

Our kids are growing up in an economy that profits from interrupting them. Every notification, algorithm and endless scroll competes for their focus. In that environment, sustained attention becomes something that must be protected.

The antidote isn’t rejecting technology. AI will undoubtedly become an important tool throughout our children’s lives. The goal isn’t to prepare them to compete with machines. It’s to nurture the qualities machines can’t replicate: discernment, empathy, imagination, collaboration and the patience to stay with complexity.

Children who spend time outdoors, work with their hands, care for their communities and engage deeply with their peers and the world they live in will be far more suited to meet this changing world with resilience and fortitude. They’re developing the habits of mind that will matter long after today’s technologies have changed.

Perhaps the best preparation for an AI-powered future isn’t teaching children to think more like computers. It’s giving them more opportunities to wonder a little longer, play a little harder and think a little deeper.