In This Series
AI has entered the classroom quietly, but its ripple effects are shaking the very structure of education. Students’ learning methods have already changed, yet institutions and assessment systems remain anchored in pre-AI rules. This gap is both the crisis and the opportunity facing education today.
The 12-part series “The Classroom Transformed by AI” is not about simply introducing new technology. It tackles a more fundamental question: what education should teach, and how learning should be evaluated. In the first article, we examine how generative AI is reshaping power dynamics in the classroom and redefining the meaning of learning—and why Korean education now stands at a critical crossroads of choice.
This series is not a story about new tools. It is a record of a deeper question: how humans will learn and grow in the age of AI.
Series Index
Part 1 | When AI Enters the Classroom, What Choice Will Korean Education Make?
Part 2 | AI Has Broken Korea’s School Assessments
By Jung Yeon-Tae,
President of the Korea Information Service of Construction Industry and Essayist.
A quiet but decisive change is taking place in classrooms today. Students are already using generative AI as a learning tool. They summarize reports, solve problems, receive explanations of concepts, and draft essays—often within minutes.
Schools and educational systems, however, remain anchored to old rules. AI use is either prohibited or left in a gray zone, and teachers are caught between uncertainty and responsibility without clear guidance. As a result, a reversal is occurring.
In access to information and speed of learning, students are beginning to outpace teachers and schools. This phenomenon lies at the heart of what can be called the “classroom revolution.” Before AI, schools operated on the assumption that knowledge and information were scarce.
Teachers possessed information, and students received, memorized, and reproduced it. Generative AI fundamentally dismantles this premise. Information is now abundant.
Explanations and examples are instantly generated. Summaries, translations, and question-and-answer exchanges are virtually limitless. Education is therefore shifting away from knowledge transmission toward competency design.
Four capabilities are becoming central: the ability to formulate meaningful questions, the ability to verify answers, the ability to design and sustain one’s own learning, and the ethics of collaboration and responsibility. What matters most is that students are already moving in this direction.
If teachers and schools fail to follow, schools risk becoming mere credentialing institutions, while real learning accelerates outside their walls. The ultimate goal of education in the AI era is not to produce people who know a lot, but people who can continue learning amid uncertainty.
In policy terms, this means shifting from education that maximizes the efficiency of knowledge acquisition to education that cultivates problem definition, verification, creativity, and ethical judgment. Without this transition, classrooms will collapse in two ways.
First, performance assessments and assignments lose credibility as AI rapidly generates polished outputs. Second, classroom engagement erodes. When students can obtain immediate answers through AI, slow and repetitive lessons quickly lose meaning.
Faced with this situation, many schools have chosen prohibition as their response. Yet this must be stated clearly: banning AI does not protect education. On the contrary, it is the fastest way for schools to lose control over learning.
Students are already using AI, and prohibition does not change that reality—it merely pushes its use out of sight. Students complete assignments with AI at home and submit only the final product. Teachers are left unable to determine whether the work reflects a student’s thinking or an AI-generated output.
Trust in assessment erodes even further. More troubling is what prohibition teaches students. It does not cultivate thinking skills or responsible tool use.
Instead, it teaches evasion: how not to get caught, how to disguise AI-generated language. This is one of the worst educational outcomes imaginable. Schools demand honesty while simultaneously eliminating the conditions for honest learning.
Schools fear AI not because of the technology itself, but due to anxiety over the potential collapse of traditional roles. Traditionally, teachers transmitted knowledge, students reproduced it, and assessments measured accuracy. AI disrupts this structure by outperforming humans in explanation, examples, and organization.
At that point, schools face two choices: deny and ban AI, or redefine the role of teachers. Prohibition is the first choice, but it is not sustainable. There is only one way for schools to regain leadership.
They must bring AI into the open rather than forcing it underground. The rule must shift from “whether AI was used” to “how it was used.” Evaluation should consider not only the final product, but also the questions asked, sources selected, and revision processes followed.
Classrooms must become spaces for verification and discussion rather than mere answer delivery. Students should have no reason to hide their use of AI. The era of prohibition is already over.
Students are learning with AI. The real question is whether schools will acknowledge this reality or continue to ignore it. To reclaim their central role, schools must not expel AI but design new learning rules that incorporate it.
This is the fundamental choice facing Korean education today.
Author Bio
Yeon-Tae Jung, President of the Construction Industry Information Institute of Korea. He completed his master’s and doctoral coursework at Stevens Institute of Technology in the United States and worked in science, technology, and information and communications industries in New York and New Jersey.
He later served in leadership roles in public enterprises and private research institutions in Korea. He writes extensively on artificial intelligence, education, and civilizational transformation.
