Schools ban AI like ChatGPT fearing it's a tool for cheating, but this is profoundly shortsighted. The quality of an AI's output is entirely dependent on the critical thinking behind the user's input. This makes AI the first truly scalable tool for teaching children how to think critically, a skill far more valuable than memorization.

True learning requires "transcendent thinking"—the natural drive to find deeper meaning beyond surface details. This involves grappling with a subject's history, hidden intentions, values, and alternative future possibilities, connecting concrete information to bigger ideas and stories.

An MRI study showed that when Montessori students answered a math problem incorrectly, their brains showed active grappling to understand the mistake. In contrast, traditionally schooled kids' brains showed patterns suggesting frustration, and they were less likely to learn from the error.

Instead of teaching decision-making in isolation, education should integrate skills like counterfactual thinking directly into core subjects. Analyzing literature by asking, "What if Macbeth had chosen a different option?" makes the material more engaging and teaches critical thinking simultaneously.

Child prodigies excel at mastering existing knowledge, like playing a perfect Mozart sonata. To succeed as adults, they must transition to creation—writing their own sonata. This fundamental shift from rote skill to original thinking is where many prodigies falter because the standards for success change completely.

ASU's president argues that if an AI can answer an assignment, the assignment has failed. The educator's role must evolve to use AI to 'up the game,' forcing students to ask more sophisticated questions, making the quality of the query—not the synthesized answer—the hallmark of learning.

Schooling has become a victim of Goodhart's Law. When a measure (grades, test scores) becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Students become experts at 'doing school' — maximizing the signal — which is a separate skill from the actual creative and intellectual capabilities the system is supposed to foster.

Traditional education focuses on solving well-defined problems, a task increasingly handled by AI. The crucial skill for the next generation is creativity and Socratic dialogue—the ability to ask the right questions and imagine what the future could look like.

The hosts question how much information they truly retain from their interviews and reading. They posit that the value isn't in recalling specific facts, but in building a deep, subconscious storage of knowledge and context that emerges in conversation, challenging learning as simple memorization.