Summary: Values education has been quietly gutted from American classrooms. Now AI exposes and accelerates that omission’s cost. The real threat isn't artificial intelligence—it’s our artificial ethics. If we continue outsourcing morality without serious adult conversations, we risk handing our culture to algorithms trained by strangers. But if we choose to engage, AI offers us the chance to rebuild our moral curriculum using the very tools shaping the future.
Teaching Values in the Age of Algorithms
A strange new forest has rooted itself right under our noses—on screens, in pockets, through earbuds. It grows not from nature but from data. No longer must students crack open encyclopedias or wait for a teacher to explain. The fruits of human knowledge are now always ripe. Just one problem: information is not judgment. Access is not wisdom. And with infinite data available, students are more uncertain than ever about what to believe—and who to be.
AI can flawlessly teach calculus, code, and grammar. But can it teach character? Can it model what integrity looks like under pressure? We’ve raised a generation inside schools that trumpet STEM while quietly treating values like irrelevant decorations—that is, if they’re taught at all. In this culture vacuum, students aren't just confused—they're vulnerable.
The Collapse of Moral Education
Let’s stop pretending we didn't do this to ourselves. Removing moral education was no accident—it was policy, appeasement, politics. Somewhere along the line, “neutrality” became the ideal, as if somehow we could have schools that broadcast nothing. But nature—and education—abhors a vacuum. If we don’t teach our kids values, someone else will, and we’re already seeing what happens: fragmentation, tribalism, moral relativism gone metastatic.
Don’t scapegoat the kids for clinging to ideologies they found on social media. We left them to scavenge the cultural leftovers while we bickered over vocabulary. Extremism fills the hole we left behind. And with the force-multiplier of large language models (LLMs), those ideologies are packaged cleaner and spread faster than ever before.
AI Ethics Can Be the Classroom Catalyst
The cure isn't regulation or bans. It’s responsibility. Just like we make kids physically practice math or music, they should practice ethical reasoning—and AI can become the very tool that makes that real again.
Imagine students role-playing challenging conversations with ChatGPT to reflect on empathy and tone. Or building proposals for local improvements, guided by AI evaluations of downstream impact. Assignments centered on restorative justice, peer-reviewed apology letters, or responses to moral dilemmas—coached by both human teachers and machines that mirror real-world complexity.
This doesn’t require new textbooks. It requires backbone. Will administrators allow messy, uncertain conversations? Will parents tolerate their children learning to wrestle with different viewpoints, some uncomfortable? Will tech providers get serious about content design instead of hiding behind terms like “neutral tool” while profiting from engagement metrics designed to divide?
The Values Gap is the Real Crisis
Freaking out about AI misses the point. The real crisis isn’t synthetic intelligence—it’s synthetic maturity. We over-inform and under-train our kids in how to live. Go to nearly any school and ask to see their values curriculum. If it exists at all, it's low-effort, low-integrity fluff. A rainbow poster on “respect.” A one-off assembly with punchlines. No feedback loops, no measurement, no ownership.
Meanwhile, kids graduate unable to write a genuine apology, resolve interpersonal conflict, or navigate pressure without panic. We gave them years of worksheets and zero relational reps. So when they fall apart in adult situations, don't act surprised. We set them up for performance—and left out the preparation.
There’s No Such Thing as a Neutral AI
Let’s kill the myth once and for all: AI is not neutral. Every LLM is trained on massive human datasets. Those datasets reflect our culture, our commercial priorities, our moral drift, and our blind spots. When a student asks an LLM for help with a persuasive essay or personal question, the response isn’t objective—it’s curated, sometimes subtly, sometimes clearly, based on what humans trained it to value.
So let’s stop hiding from the influence AI has and instead seize it. We need to shape it—openly, proudly—so our values stand a chance in the next generation. Because if we don’t embed conscience, someone else’s version of that word is going to win. Fast.
Let Students Practice Virtue, Not Just Recite It
Values only sink in through repetition and lived experience. That’s why I’ve pushed for embedding practical ethical reasoning into student tech design, including national programs like the Presidential AI Challenge. When teenagers use AI to solve problems in their community—like helping food banks track needs or improving their school’s schedule—they don't just build skills. They build perspective. They act out responsibility, problem-solving, citizenship.
In medicine, the model is learn it, live it, teach it. Let’s use that same scaffolding to develop moral competence. Helping someone younger fosters both self-respect and leadership. Isn’t that what we want in our voters and neighbors?
“Won’t AI Make Them Lazy?”—No, But Fear Might
Let’s be honest. Most adult panic isn't about the student's misuse of AI; it's about the adults’ own laziness, vanity, and insecurity. We make face filters and then shriek about cheating. We binge algorithmic junk and then complain kids copy answers. It’s projection at scale.
But kids mimic us. If what we show them is fear and bans, they’ll act out confusion and defiance. If we model ownership—using AI to inform, support, and create—then that’s what they’ll imitate.
Let’s have them train LLMs with better inputs, critique biases, and refine prompts to explain their choices. That builds discernment—and gives us better future leaders.
The Double Standard is Our Problem, Not Theirs
The greatest hypocrisy? Adults using AI to Photoshop their dating profiles while warning students not to use it for homework. We waste bandwidth on dopamine but scream about lost discipline.
This is why the problem isn't an educational emergency. It's a cultural one. The kids aren’t failing us. We are failing them by modeling chaos while preaching control. Want responsible students? Then act like responsible adults. Stop blaming tech. Start reforming the curriculum, your tech use, and your leadership.
A Generation That Judges Wisely
We’ve overfed our kids information and left them starving for conviction. We taught them how to find answers—but not how to ask the right questions. Now AI enters the picture, curating more answers, faster.
The real tree in this story isn’t digital. It’s moral. The original tale of Genesis centers on knowing good and evil. We’ve reaped the fruits of knowledge, but without taught discernment, we risk cultural entropy.
Why should we prepare kids only through mistakes when we can let them practice character safely, early, and visibly? Why not give them moral tools—well tested, well argued, aligned with our societal commitments? It’s our job to step in. AI cannot generate core values. It amplifies what we’ve already seeded. Have we seeded anything worth growing?
So what should an AI-augmented values curriculum look like? That’s not a question to be solved in a memo. It’s a national conversation—and it’s overdue. Come to my Substack. Let’s figure it out together. Because if we don’t teach conscience, someone else will.
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