The High Schools Going All-In on AI
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Mm-hmm.
A few months ago, my colleague Sam Scheckner flew to Estonia in northern Europe. He was there to visit high schools. A Spanish teacher let him sit in on a class.
He had set up the class in the computer lab and he introduced me to the class and said I'd be observing.
The whole text that you have there, just copy paste that into chat and you all I have also a text.
And you know, basically he showed them some sort of game like activities that he'd created with ChatGPT for them to practice their Spanish.
And then give give ChatGPT the prompt that you have there. Yes, Marthias, the same one, yes.
Сам, хадиджу фан-дюрсена, класром Естонія.
Well, they are doing something that I thought was unusual, interesting. And a little bit scary. They are giving every high school student in the country. or at least to start with every tenth and eleventh grader, their own chat GPT account.
Why?
Well yeah, that's the funny part. They're doing it because they're worried about the impact that AI could have on learning.
Estonia started thinking about the project in 2024 after one survey found that 90% of the country's high school students were already using generative AI for learning.
They figured that not doing anything was the worst choice of all. And so instead they're launching a national experiment to figure out what the best thing is to do. And I wanted to figure out if there's a way to I guess at a basic level, if there's a way to keep learning in an age when machines can do your thinking for you.
And you don't have to worry about the grammar because uh the chat will tell you if you have made a mistake and you can correct it afterwards.
Why does what's happening in Estonium matter to people who are not living in Estonia?
Estonia, right, it's a small country. Uh it's you know bordering Russia. It's it's different language. It it feels it feels pretty far away. But this is really the first big deployment in high schools of chat GPT. The entire idea of school and how we encourage learning and and what even we want people to learn is at stake here. And so it it's a glimpse maybe of what could happen in a school district near you.
Welcome to the journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's Thursday, September twenty fourth. Coming up on the show, Inside Estonia's high school experiment with AI.
Estonia's decision to bring AI into classrooms is not the country's first rodeo with new technology.
Estonia, since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in the 90s, was early to put the internet in classrooms. They had something called the Tiger Leap.
Estonia's Tiger Leap Foundations launched a program introducing IT science and computer programming at schools from the first grade. During the Tiger Leap, news shows in Estonia showed kids rushing toward computers. Its designers point out that internet and modern technologies have become an integral part of daily life.
They're extremely proud of this. This is part of the country's kind of founding legacy. They see themselves as a digital country. And so when the AI revolution comes about, the natural instinct is, okay, we're gonna have to grab this bull by the horns. This is this is what Estonia does.
So last year, Estonia decided to launch a new experiment. They're calling it the AI leap. The country's partnered with OpenAI and recently with Google to give tens of thousands of high schoolers access to free chatbots. This is yeah.
Small.
Jim we have.
Not that small. Oh
yeah, yeah, but for a thousand students, yeah. Yeah. One school that's part of AI Leap is located in Tallinn, Estonia's capital. During his visit, Sam met with the school principal. Indrek Lilimagi,
he is the principal of Tallin Pelgalina State High School, or Perg as it's known. If
you would like to just see the school baby also or
show me. It's a beautiful school. And you know, Indrek himself uses AI tools. He, you know, tells me he he does some vibe coding and you know the school ethos that he set up is very human. And in fact, in the school, they they don't oblige any student to use AI if they don't want to.
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