Luís Horta, a teacher with 31 years of experience and author of books about ChatGPT for teachers and students, warns at the start of the new school year about an issue he considers fundamental: how much of the work students should be doing with their heads are they already handing over to a machine? The author is not opposed to using artificial intelligence, but questions whether students are learning to use these tools after they have learned to think, or whether, on the contrary, they are replacing them before basic competencies are consolidated.
The most recent PISA results make this warning particularly pertinent. Portugal lost 12 points in Mathematics and 15 in Reading over three years, reversing progress that had been internationally recognized. In computational problem-solving, a new area assessed by PISA, Portugal scored 501 points, practically equal to the OECD average of 500. The author acknowledges that it would be intellectually dishonest to directly blame technology or AI for these results, but argues they justify a discussion that parents and teachers can no longer postpone.
Horta observes in his students a growing difficulty in persisting with problems that don't resolve quickly, with frustration at the first failed attempt and loss of patience with texts that require more than a single reading. Technology has accustomed everyone, adults included, to reducing the time between a doubt and an answer. However, the author distinguishes between using tools to accelerate skills already acquired, as he himself does, and handing those tools to children and teenagers who are still building those competencies. The calculator example is illustrative: a child may get 56 when calculating 7×8, but the objective of the lesson was to learn how to get there, not just to obtain the answer.
The article mentions measures adopted in other countries, such as Norway, which has strongly restricted autonomous AI use in the early years of schooling, and Denmark, which has implemented oral defenses of written work and more assessments under controlled conditions. Horta proposes that students be asked to explain, defend arguments, and identify weaknesses in their own work, using conversation as a form of assessment. He also emphasizes the role of parents, suggesting they ask "what have you already tried?" or "what do you think?" instead of immediately providing the answer. The article concludes that although young people today have access to machines capable of thinking for them, the real challenge is teaching them to use that advantage without confusing speed with learning, so that they end the year needing fewer people or things to think for them.
