Teach Them to Be Human. AI Will Handle the Rest.

Every parent I know is asking some version of the same question: what should we actually be teaching our kids now that AI can do… most things?

It’s not a theoretical question for me. I have three kids. The oldest is nine. By the time she enters the workforce, the landscape will be unrecognizable. So what do I optimize for?

Not coding. AI writes code better than most humans already. Not memorization. AI has perfect recall. Not even “STEM” as a blanket answer — because the rote parts of STEM are exactly what gets automated first.

Here’s what I keep coming back to.

Persuasion. AI can generate a perfect pitch deck. It cannot look across the table and feel that someone’s afraid. The most persuasive people I’ve met aren’t the ones with the best arguments — they’re the ones who sense what someone needs to hear before they know it themselves. That’s not logic. It’s attunement. Reading the room, feeling the tension, knowing when to push and when to sit in silence. Persuasion that actually moves people starts with emotional awareness — understanding where someone is before trying to take them somewhere else. AI will make everyone’s arguments sharper. The edge will belong to people who know how to make others feel understood.

Collaboration. AI is a solo force multiplier. But the hardest problems aren’t technical — they’re human. A team falling apart because two people won’t say what’s actually bothering them. A project stalling because someone feels unheard and has checked out. Collaboration isn’t project management. It’s emotional labor. It’s noticing when someone’s energy shifts in a meeting. It’s having the conversation nobody wants to have. It’s holding space for disagreement without letting it curdle into resentment. Kids who learn to sit with discomfort — their own and other people’s — will be able to do things AI never will.

Curiosity. The kids who thrive won’t be the ones who were forced to learn. They’ll be the ones who wanted to. Curiosity is the engine. Without it, AI is a toy. With it, AI is a superpower. A curious kid with access to AI can teach themselves almost anything. An incurious kid with the same access will use it to cheat on homework.

The belief you can learn anything. This might matter most. Not “you’re smart” — that’s fragile. But “you can figure this out if you’re willing to put in the work.” The rate of change means constant relearning. Kids who believe they can adapt will. Kids who’ve been told they’re either gifted or not will freeze.

Agency. The willingness to act without being told. To see a problem and start solving it. AI lowers every barrier to building — but someone still has to decide to build. Agency is the difference between a kid who consumes and a kid who creates.

So where does school fit?

School still matters. You need foundational knowledge. You can’t think critically about nothing — you need facts, frameworks, context to reason with. Reading, writing, math, science — these aren’t obsolete. They’re the substrate everything else runs on.

The question isn’t whether school matters. It’s whether school as currently designed builds or breaks the skills that matter most.

Because here’s the tension: school is great at building foundational knowledge. School is also great at crushing curiosity, agency, and self-belief.

Standardized tests reward compliance, not curiosity. Grades reward right answers, not interesting questions. The kid who asks “why?” too many times gets labeled difficult. The kid who colors inside the lines gets praised.

How do you build knowledge without killing the drive to use it?

Some stress is good. But how much?

This is the part I wrestle with most.

Kids need challenge. Struggle builds resilience, grit, the belief that hard things are possible. A kid who’s never uncomfortable never grows. Shielding them from difficulty isn’t kindness — it’s deprivation.

But there’s a line. Too much pressure doesn’t build resilience. It builds anxiety, avoidance, learned helplessness. And the line is different for every kid — which makes it impossible to systematize, which is exactly what school tries to do.

The right amount of stress: enough that they stretch, not so much that they break. Enough that they fail sometimes and discover they can recover. That’s where growth lives.

I don’t have answers. I have experiments.

Expose them to hard things early, with support. Celebrate effort and process, not just outcomes. Let them use AI as a tool, but make sure they understand what’s happening underneath. And above all — protect curiosity. A curious kid with foundational knowledge and agency will figure out the rest.

The skills that matter in the AI age aren’t new. Persuasion, collaboration, curiosity, agency, the belief you can learn anything — these have always mattered.

What’s new is that everything else is getting automated.

These aren’t soft skills anymore. They’re the only skills.