The Journal. · Thursday, September 24, 2026
Estonian educators are grappling with how to integrate AI into classrooms while preserving essential learning skills. Principal Indrek Lillimägi likens AI's ability to do work for students to a personal trainer lifting weights for a gym-goer, arguing it bypasses the effort needed for development. Teachers like Agna Kosk are exploring new pedagogical approaches to ensure students are still engaging in critical thinking.
“If you imagine that school is a gym for the brain, and you go to the gym, it would be kind of pointless to ask your personal trainer to lift your weights for you, right?”
“AI basically breaks the connection between effort and output. AI now makes it so that the output, the performance is not correlated anymore with the effort that you do.”
“I I don't believe in AI as this thing that will personalize education because then it means that everybody's sitting in their own room somewhere and that it doesn't work. They need to, they need to talk more than ever.”