Rebecca Winthrop: If AI Does the Homework, Learning Stops

During COVID, Rebecca Winthrop watched her straight-A eldest son stop working the day his grades went pass/fail. "If it's not counted, it doesn't matter," he told her. Her younger son, who had struggled at school, blossomed at the kitchen table. The education expert had read her own children the wrong way round.

Rebecca is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. Before Brookings, she ran the International Rescue Committee's education work in more than 20 conflict-affected countries. With journalist Jenny Anderson she wrote The Disengaged Teen, built on a survey of more than 65,000 students, and in January 2026 a Brookings global task force on AI in education she led concluded that, at this point, the risks of generative AI in children's education overshadow its benefits.

As Chairman of SKEMA Business School, I feel one question every day: if a machine can write the essay, what are we really teaching? I brought Rebecca the four traps I see for adults using AI, from illusory competence to atrophy, and asked her which one worries her most for a child. Her answer started from what children are for at school: their job is to learn. And because these teenagers are tomorrow's employees, we asked whether her four modes of learning apply at work too.

In our conversation, we explore:
→ The four modes of learning, passenger, achiever, resister and explorer, and why good grades can hide a child who has stopped learning
→ AI and children: Prosper, Prepare, Protect, and why an assignment AI can do should not be assigned
→ Leapfrogging: why most education technology only digitises the old classroom, and what worked in the Brazilian Amazon
→ Parents and leaders: why nagging backfires, how to model curiosity at home, and how to reward explorers at work
→ What school should be for by 2030, from the refugee women in Costa Rica who wanted to learn to read to her plan as Minister of Education for a day

"You can learn to think critically by writing an essay. And that is actually the point and purpose of writing an essay. It isn't the finished product." Rebecca Winthrop, on school in the age of AI

If you have ever wondered what your children, or your youngest colleagues, really learn when AI can do the work, this conversation is for you.

Rebecca's work:
Brookings: https://www.brookings.edu/people/rebecca-winthrop/
Website: https://www.rebeccawinthrop.com/
A New Direction for Students in an AI World (Brookings task force, 2026): https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-new-direction-for-students-in-an-ai-world-prosper-prepare-protect/

🎧 Related episodes:

• MacKenzie Price (2026), reimagining education in the age of AI at Alpha School: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/18461438
• Rana Dajani (2023), thriving through reading, and libraries for children in refugee camps: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/12161222
• Angela Duckworth (2024), the power of grit, passion and perseverance: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1798971/episodes/14677055

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