learning – Ari Sharp

Who says?

I’ve just finished seven weeks as a student teacher in an NZ secondary school, and this was a question I posed whenever students would make a claim as part of a class discussion or assignment. And I reckon it’s a question every teacher should be asking often.

For a decade we have talked about an informational crisis – how do we know what sources we can trust to make sense of the world? – and now we are in the midst of an epistemological crisis.

Everyone (and every bot) can be a publisher, AI is generating plausible bullshit at an industrial scale, and deep fakes mean we cannot even trust our sensory organs.

As educators our job is to help students to understand the world so they can change it. Essential to this challenge is to give them the tools to discern truth from truthiness (thanks, Stephen Colbert).

Fortunately there are some great resources out there. Check out Squiz Kids’ Newshounds program in Australia and its recent podcast series The Big Threat.

Teaching media literacy is not merely the domain of English teachers – every educator needs to instill in their students media literacy habits of mind: critiquing sources of information as a matter of course.

This might involve students interrogating the credibility of the source, verifying facts independently, probing the biases and motivations of authors, and triangulating evidence from multiple sources. When it comes to AI-generated content, teachers should mandate that students probe deeper for the originating source.

Yes, that means that teachers themselves, and the sources they use, should be subject to scrutiny. We should expect – indeed, teach – our students to activate their bullshit detectors whenever we make a claim.

Some teachers may find that the sources they rely on do not stand up to scrutiny. Good. We should do better.

I look forward to hearing students ask their peers, their teachers and themselves, “Who says?” – and listening hard to the answers.

First posted on LinkedIn in July 2026.

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.

Tag: learning

Who says? Discerning truth from truthiness

There’s one thing AI can’t do: be a citizen