Another day, another story about AI upending the workforce.
As confronting as it is for everyone already working, for school students the impact is greater still.
Who can have any certainty about what jobs will exist beyond 2030? What skills and habits of mind will be necessary to function?
No one knows with any certainty – and anyone who claims they do is probably trying to sell you something.
As I have been studying to be a teacher, I have been thinking about what it means for schools. The perennial question of recent years – Why should I bother learning how to do something myself when AI can do it better and faster? – is becoming more frequent and the answer more dispiriting.
We need to level with students. On the vocational front, the best we can do is teach students foundational skills and good habits, and wish them the courage and good humour to figure it out when they get there.
But here’s the thing. Even if many jobs of the future will be done by AI, the most fundamental task in life cannot be done by machine: citizenship.
Whatever happens with AI, it will ultimately be humans – as citizens – who decide how it is used. Citizens will set the guardrails of the technology, shape the ways we deploy it, and determine the supports to those whose lives are impacted.
Axiomatically, no matter how capable the technology becomes, it will be citizens who decide its place – short of extending citizenship to HAL’s descendants.
(The argument that big tech wields greater influence than citizens in the actions of governments is largely true. This only strengthens the case for centring citizenship. Such a situation is a function of an undervaluing of citizenship, and will only be rectified by more active citizenship.)
So I think there is a compelling case that educators should focus our attentions on instilling in students the attitudes and skills of good citizenship. We know with certainty that these attitudes and skills will be central to building a better world.
When I talk about the attitudes and skills of citizenship, I mean the characteristics that enable societies to make collective decisions. To answer questions like: How do we navigate through differences to achieve a consensus? How do we truthfully inform ourselves about things that matter? How do we fairly share efforts and resources? How do we reckon with the legacies of history? How do we hold people in power to account? How do we protect individual and collective rights?
Enacting the answers to these questions cannot come from the machine. Humans need to do the work. So as schools and teachers, we need to equip our students to do it. If we get this wrong, the worst techno-dystopia becomes possible. But get it right, and we can use the technology to enable human flourishing.
Schools have few more important jobs than nurturing good citizens. Let’s do it.
First posted on LinkedIn in May 2026.
Ari Sharp 