AI is Swimming Across Education’s Moats — Are We Ready for What Comes Next?

AI isn’t storming the gates of education — it’s swimming quietly across the moat.

In this episode of What Teachers Have to Say, Jake unpacks how the traditional moats that once protected education — content, pedagogy, and institutional processes — are quietly eroding as AI reshapes the landscape. Inspired by a thought-provoking LinkedIn post by Steven Bartlett (FlightStory, Thirdweb, The Diary of a CEO), Jake explores how these shifts parallel what’s happening in business and asks:

👉 Are we ready for what comes next?

We’ll explore:

• Why content has become a commodity — and what that means for the teacher’s role.
• Why sticking to scripted programs and pacing guides won’t protect schools — and how real expertise is more critical than ever.
• What new moats schools must build to stay relevant — from fostering authentic community to mentoring students in ways AI can’t replicate.

But that’s not all. Jake also teases insights from his upcoming book with Dave Burgess Consulting, The Skills that Last: Preparing Students for an Unpredictable World, highlighting how curation, critical thinking, and mentorship are the key skills that will future-proof education.

Ready to build stronger moats in your classroom?
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Transcript

Jake Carr (00:00)
All right.

Welcome back to What Teachers Have to Say. I'm Jake. And today we're gonna dig into something that's kind of been like eating at me for a while. know Nathan and I have talked a lot about this. Well, I recently came across a post on LinkedIn by Steven Bartlett. he hosts a podcast called The Diary of a CEO. And let me tell you, his post helped catalyze that thing I've been thinking about. So,

Stephen talked about how AI is quietly tearing down the moats that once protected the entire business industries. And then I was reading through the comments and I kept thinking, moats don't just disappear overnight, they crumble quietly, bit by bit, long before we even like notice all the cracks and the water and all that stuff. So here's where my brain went to next. This isn't just about business. It's been happening in education too.

the same forces that are just totally terrifying industries right now, they've been quietly gnawing away at what we think protects our schools. And if we're not paying attention, we're not gonna realize until the drawbridge is already gone.

All right, so let's talk about motes for a second. You know, like the classic image, like medieval castles, towers, walls, deep, wide motes with water keeping the invaders out, right? I kind of think like Monty Python search for the Holy Grail. Well, it's a concept that they actually like to banter about in the business world, but it really applies to education, Build strong barriers, protect what's inside, and then keep the threats at bay. It's something that we do. Well, but

The moat that I can't stop thinking about, it's not like medieval. It's a very specific moat from a musical called Once Upon a Mattress. And you might know the 2005 film version with Tracy Ullman, or if you're of a certain vintage, Carol Burnett might come to mind. Well, if you haven't seen it, here's the setup. Princess Winifred shows up to prove that she is worthy of marrying the prince.

But instead of making a grand entrance across a drawbridge, right, her whole retinue, like everyone expected, she dives in and she just swims across the moat, climbs up and over the wall. The kingdom built its defenses expecting a siege, right? That's what normal fairy tale kingdoms do, but she totally bypassed them all together. Suddenly that big old moat, totally irrelevant. And that's exactly where we're at in education.

We have motes that used to protect our schools, the barriers that kept alternatives from disrupting that whole system. They're not being smashed down by battering rams. some of them might be right now, but we'll talk about that another time. They're just being swum across or flown across, right, by new technologies, new models, new ways of thinking. And if we're not paying attention, we're gonna miss it. So let's get back to Bartlett's post for just a minute, right?

In business, a moat is anything that makes it hard for someone else to steal your customers and replace your value. It's what protects your business. So here's a couple of examples from his post. If you ran a film studio 20 years ago, your moat was really expensive equipment and really hard to access distribution channels. If you were a software company, your moat was millions of dollars in proprietary code that nobody else could just easily replicate. But here's the thing.

Technology, especially now artificial intelligence, it just loves to chew through those emotes like termites, right? Well, Bartlett's post nailed it perfectly. AI has slashed the cost of content creation. Image, video, code. It's almost zero. And when creation becomes really cheap, value has to find a new home. Well, how is this now going to fit in education? So as I was reading through the comments of that post,

I realized that it's a perfect analogy. Okay, so here's some things from the comments. There was a cybersecurity expert named Laman Kinte, And he said, this post is a mic drop moment that makes me pause and think. It's a wake up call to focus on community connection and meaningful creativity that AI cannot replicate. Another comment by an AI strategist named Chris Gallagher says,

I can see so many creative agencies crumbling because they think AI can't replace human creativity, but that's the wrong fight. It's about leveraging AI while doubling down on what makes us human. Those comments hit me hard because they describe the exact thing that we're facing in schools. If we cling too tightly to what's always worked, you might think back to like protecting stations of power.

We might get caught up in that whole romance of traditional structures. We risk becoming irrelevant while the world moves forward. And I think that I've been feeling this for a long time. Well, this shift isn't just theoretical. It is really happening right now. And I mean, think about this. I'm literally sitting in my car in the rain at the regional airport because they have good cell signal.

with nothing but my MacBook and software recording and editing this whole podcast. 20 years ago, producing something like this would have required a studio, gear, a team of sound engineers. Now, the cost of creating content has plummeted to almost nothing. Well, for the longest time, education had its own moats Those things that...

that made it hard, right, for alternatives to just challenge traditional schooling. Sure, we had some homeschool, we had some earth school, forest schooling, right? I taught in Waldorf schools. That's fine. I don't mean different modalities. I mean the actual way that we teach and learn. And I wanna talk about these three motes, right? I've come up with three motes. I wanna talk about them. There's plenty more. In fact, I love to hear...

from you which of these motes or others are the most concerned, drop a comment on one of our posts or leave me a speak pipe message and I'd love to chat about it and hear your reflection on it. Okay, so number one, the first mote is content. So curriculum used to be a fortress, right? Creating really high quality standards aligned curricula.

It took a lot of time, a lot of expertise and a lot of resources. But now AI can spin up really convincing stuff in seconds. with OER, right? Open Educational Resources Everywhere content, it's not a moat anymore. But before I send somebody spiraling, let's be real, right? Is AI content as good as something crafted by an expert teacher?

One who knows their students, understands nuance, can adapt lessons on the fly. No, not yet. But here's where it gets really uncomfortable. We have to start recognize that it's good enough. So for someone who knows how to prompt well and someone who's using these frontier models, this is a rub that I get into. People argue with me all the time that it's not that great. And then I find out they're using older outdated models. Well.

If they're using a great model and they know how to prompt well, AI gets you like 80 or 90 % of the way there. And frankly, that is way more than close enough to change this whole ball game. number two, pedagogy is a mode, it's shifting. So pedagogical expertise, it's been a protective barrier.

There's, we've kind of loved a little veil over how we teach in the past, right? Deep knowledge of teaching methods, learning science, it's been really hard to replicate, especially if you're a general education teacher. There's just so much to know, but let's be honest, it's really hard to get going in some teachers even. Well.

AI can just suggest interventions, analyze student data, differentiate instruction way faster than a human can. And this is exactly why so many districts, I'm not for this, but they force teachers to stick to a script, follow the pacing guide and like, ugh, teach the program to validity, right? Well, because teaching is messy.

thousands of variables and not

Everyone is an expert at their craft. We have to own that and When that's the case districts will build systems to try to reduce their vulnerability to reduce the variable factors there because They're just trying to guarantee some level of consistency across all these unpredictable outcomes right wrong or indifferent that's where this is coming from and AI is really good at pedagogical

expertise. It might not know exactly where to craft it on the fly, but these expert teachers who are driving AI do. Number three, this one, institutional processes. Man, that is a moat that we just loved its protection from. processes used to protect the system. I'm talking compliance, attendance tracking, standardized assessment, hall passes.

all of these kinds of protective systems that give an air of security? Well, they're all about efficiency. And efficiency shouldn't be protective. It should just be the baseline. So when AI begins to take over these processes, the real question is, what's left that actually protects education? And that's where we can get a little dystopian. So just stick with me.

We've all seen like apocalyptic visions of classrooms with kids strapped with monitors to their faces being taught by like an educational manager. Maybe you saw those terrifying headbands that were going on in China that turned red when students were off task. this is all that protective moat crumbling. And frankly, they'll get it right at some point.

Right now, we're a little bit protected by these things. Well, we need to come up with new motes in education, right? So if content,

even pedagogy aren't these protective motes like they used to be, what are? This is where Bartlett's insights, and he's got a PDF on this post that's really interesting to read. Also the conversation around the post.

There's a blueprint and it matches education. These new moats, they're not about making things. They're about understanding, curating, connecting, developing, things that AI can't replicate the way that a human can.

And if you're a long time listener to the podcast, you shouldn't be surprised, right, to hear this. So let's talk about these three motes that I want to bring up. Number one, community is our new curriculum. Relationships are not an add-on to learning. They are the core. Schools that build authentic, thriving communities create a mote that AI cannot cross. When students feel like they belong and...

perceive benefit from their time being there, engagement follows. And where the engagement happens, the learning happens. Number two, curation is a new competency. So content is everywhere, but the ability to curate, to sift through information, contextualize it, make it meaningful, that is the superpower of the future, at least the near future.

And yes, it requires that we change a ton of what we do during the school day. And no, I don't have that part totally solved yet. So keep listening to our episodes. We'll work it out. Number three, mentorship. It's an ultimate differentiator, right? AI can personalize instruction. I've seen it work miracles. But what it cannot do is mentor. It cannot provide nuanced human guidance.

built from years of experience that help a student navigate life. It helps students build resilience. It helps them grow confidence. AI can't do that the way that humans can. You might be thinking, AI is not the only force eroding education's defenses, and you're absolutely right. Political pressures, shifting legislation, disillusionment.

dissolving the Department of Education, cultural battles, they're all chipping away at education and traditional motes. But that is a whole other conversation. So just stow that for a moment. Trust me, we'll get there. But today, we just wanna talk about AI and where it leaves us. So if content, processes, and even pedagogy aren't these motes anymore, where does that leave us?

Or we can keep guarding the old gates, sticking to pacing guides, overloading teachers with scripted programs, hoping that standardization is somehow gonna keep us relevant. Or we can recognize the real value in education. And AI can't swim across it. And it comes from something much deeper. It comes from these three. Just if you take anything away from today, take these three. Number one.

Human connection is not going to be replaced by artificial intelligence. Yes, there's going to be some augmentation. There's some crazy studies out there about how effective, like, emotional help and therapy is done through artificial intelligence. But that's not the same. In a world where students could learn anything, anywhere, the thing that's going to keep them coming back to school, it's not the content itself. It's the connection.

teachers who genuine relationships, they build a moat that AI will never breach. I don't believe that we will ever allow ourselves to become that weird Wall-E thing. Number two, relevance helps students bridge learning to real life. So learning sticks when it's relevant.

I don't mess around with things that aren't gonna pay off, right? And I love learning, but schools need to be better at helping students connect content to their lives, their future, their interests. Compulsory education or not, students invest a lot of their time in school and if they're not feeling that a payout is coming, they are checking out. And frankly, I don't blame them. I'm right there with them.

And that whole like, when are we ever gonna use this question? That's a no brainer anymore. Don't answer it. I stopped answering that about two years ago. Let AI do it for them. It does a phenomenal job. But you get to come up on the back end and douse it with wisdom and connect it to them. Number three, keep coming back to skills. The true mode.

this unpredictable future. If content, processes, and pedagogy aren't the moats anymore, skills, not just any, but the kind that prepares students to adapt, to think critically, to solve problems. This is a world that AI will be able to do almost anything and frankly, probably sooner than you think. But when we focus on building critical thinking,

information processing, adaptability, empathy, decision making, all of these skills that we've talked about. And if you're not, if you haven't listened, go back to our 56 skills episode with the McKinsey report. Well, we're not just preparing students for tests. We're preparing them for life. We're giving them that moat that AI is never going to swim across because those are the skills that separate these passive consumers.

from empowered creators. I keep going on and on. The real moat in education, it's not about what we teach. It's about who we are. It's about how we connect. It's about how we prepare students to navigate a world that we're not always gonna be a part of. We're helping students develop the same skills that are gonna carry them through adulthood.

We're equipping them to make sense of complexity, to ask the right questions, to thrive long after, frankly, we've become the past And they've taken their place as the present. Well,

I should wrap it up. Okay, if this conversation has got you thinking about artificial intelligence skills, where we're headed in education, whatever, I would love to hear your thoughts. It's really exciting to see people are starting to reach out and use that speak pipe. Well, what questions are you asking? What shifts are you seeking? What do you want to hear? Please head over to the speak pipe. We have the link in the show description on social media.

Heck, email me and I'll send it to you. Leave us a voice message. Your insights, they're gonna shape future episodes.

Stay curious, stay hopeful, keep learning. This is Jake. I'll see you later.