“What’s the point?”

I was asked this question last week by a teenager when I was in a school talking about Taylo, our new AI-powered personal teaching assistant. 

Thankfully, the child wasn’t asking what’s the point in Taylo, he loved that. 

He was asking what the point was of the maths lesson he’d just come from.  They were learning about the equation of a straight line.

“What’s the point?” he asked.

“When am I ever going to use this? Even my teacher couldn’t tell me why it matters.”

He went on to say: “I don’t need to know this to get a job. I’ll never use it in real life. The world is so competitive now, I don’t have time to waste on things that don’t matter. Why aren’t schools teaching us the things we need?”

He raises a great question.

Today’s children are growing up in a world where:

• Knowledge and answers are at their fingertips (accuracy of that data can be debated in a later post!)

• Technology is omni-present and evolving at a faster pace than ever before.

• The jobs market they will be competing in is now global.

• Entry-level roles demand experience of tools that didn’t exist 6 months ago.

• AI is rewriting what work looks like and who (or what) gets to do it.

• The cost of living and housing has outpaced salaries beyond recognition.

For children, every lesson matters. Every hour at school must count.

So, what is the point?

If AI has the answers, what should schools be teaching?

You can now ask ChatGPT to write an essay, solve an equation (of a straight line should you need to), or explain the Treaty of Versailles in less than 50 words.

So why learn anything at all? Should we even bother going to school?

The answer lies in a shift that schools, governments, and society are only beginning to wrestle with.

It’s no longer just about what you know. It’s about your ability to think.

Not to memorise facts.

Not to parrot answers.

Not to remove em dashes better than anyone else.

But to question, reason, connect, challenge, and create.

In this new world, education isn’t just about acquiring and holding knowledge.

It’s about holding your own in a world full of knowledge.

Thinking is now the core capability.

The pupil I met wasn’t disengaged because he didn’t care.

He was disengaged because he couldn’t see the link between what he was being asked to learn and the working world he will soon be entering.

Learning about the equation of a straight line can be relevant. But only if we help pupils see that it’s not just about lines on a graph, it’s about patterns, structure, logic and a chance to build critical thinking skills.

What if the real purpose of school isn’t to teach you everything you might use,

but to train you in how to think, so you can use anything?

And here’s where AI re-enters the conversation.

Can AI help you think?

At its worst, AI replaces thinking.

It gives you the answer too fast. It skips the hard bit. It feeds the passivity we’re seeing in and out of classrooms.

But used the right way, AI can be your thinking partner.

It can:

• Challenge your ideas.

• Ask you better questions.

• Help you refine your argument.

• Explain concepts in ways that finally make sense.

• Show you the connections between what you’re learning and what you care about.

In other words, AI can teach you how to think.

But only if we design it to do so.

At Taylo, this is our guiding belief.

We’re not building an AI to give pupils the answers. That’s too easy, we’ll let others do that.

We’re building one that helps pupils think through their problems, challenge themselves, and grow. Taylo guides them through their Zone of Proximal Development, helping them get comfortable with struggle, ask bolder questions, and learn by making mistakes in a safe space.

The future will be won by those who can think better than others.

When you teach a young person how to think you give them the one skill that transcends exams, job descriptions, and technological change.

You give them confidence, adaptability, creativity, and independence.

And when you combine that with AI as a sparring partner that understands them and how they learn, the possibilities aren’t fewer. They’re infinite.

So yes, AI can help you think.

Taylo AI can anyway!