Most high-achieving students feel like nobodies the moment they graduate!
Not because they weren't smart. Not because they didn't work hard.
But because school optimized them for one thing: moving through a system efficiently.
And efficiency, it turns out, is not the same as learning.
I had one of the most honest education conversations I've had in a long time with
@AaronSitze , Head of Learning and Experience at
@synthesischool , alongside
@TomoClub_edu co-founder
@avinash_dtu .
A few things Aaron said that are worth thinking about:
๐๐ป Struggle is not a bug in learning. It's the whole point. When we remove frustration from the classroom, we remove the very mechanism that builds real capability.
๐๐ป Students are almost always more capable than the system gives them credit for. We've just built a system that never asks them to prove it.
๐๐ป Game-based learning works not because it's fun, but because it creates genuine emotional stakes. That's what traditional instruction rarely does.
And the AI point? It's the one that stayed with me the most.
Aaron draws a sharp line between AI making learning easier and AI making learning feel easier.
Those are not the same thing. And most of us in EdTech are not asking that question nearly enough.
This is a 60-minute conversation, and it earns every minute.
Give it a listen if you work in education, build learning products, or you're a parent wondering whether school is actually preparing your kid for anything beyond the next test.
Link in the comments!
So here's the question I'll leave you with:
If schools stopped measuring what's easy to measure, what would they actually be accountable for?