Who Is Learning the Route?

Originally written in Traditional Chinese: 問題從來不是開不開導航，是誰在認路

An eighth grader in Pennsylvania told The Wall Street Journal something every educator should sit with: "It slowed my thinking down. When I was in a test and I couldn't use AI, it was hard to think."

The Journal's investigation, published at the end of September, looked at how Google has brought Gemini and other AI tools into US classrooms. Reporters spoke with more than 60 teachers, school leaders, parents, children and clinicians.

I know that feeling firsthand. When AI first arrived, I ran a full test on myself. I used it every single day, until I hit the usage limit every single day. Then one day I deliberately worked without it. My ability to develop ideas had dropped sharply, because I had come to depend on it. With AI, I was stronger. Without it, I was not only weaker. The bigger problem was that I had lost my patience. A drop in ability is a small problem. Losing patience is the real one.

It also reminded me of something most of us have lived through. You drive somewhere ten times with GPS. The eleventh time, your phone dies, and you stall at the second intersection. You are not lost because you are slow. You are lost because, for ten trips, someone else was finding the way.

The same month, the OECD released PISA 2025 results covering more than 760,000 fifteen year olds in 91 countries and economies. 86% of students had used AI chatbots for schoolwork, and close to one in five used them almost daily. Students who used AI once or twice a week did no worse in science than those who rarely used it. Daily users scored lower. The OECD is careful to call this a correlation, not proof of cause. But one line from the report stays with me: learning does not occur through the consumption of content, but as a productive cognitive struggle of the mind. And struggle takes patience, which is exactly what I found I had lost first.

This is not a case for switching AI off. GPS is a great tool in an unfamiliar city. Google, for its part, says its tools help improve learning outcomes, and its Guided Learning feature is designed to walk students through problems step by step rather than hand over answers. The question was never whether the navigation is on. It is who is learning the route.

The principle I teach parents and teachers is simple: think first, then use AI.

Before asking AI, sketch your own route in one line: where you would start, where you might get stuck.
After AI answers, compare the two routes. The step where they differ is what you actually learned today.
Keep one stretch each week with the navigation off. Finish a piece of work alone, then ask AI to find the mistakes.

We do not need to give children a phone that never runs out of battery. We need to give them a mind that knows the way.

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Who Is Learning the Route?

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