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In 2017, Alex Campbell, a sociology teacher at Elizabethton High School in Tennessee, offered his students the assignment of a lifetime: Could they solve a notorious series of cold-case murders that had stumped law enforcement for more than three decades?

He warned them up front: 鈥淭his is going to be the hardest class you鈥檝e ever had.鈥�

His students鈥� response left no doubt: They eagerly dug into the so-called Redhead Murders, unsolved killings of at least six young women whose bodies had been dumped along roadsides across the South from the late 1970s through early 1990s. They soon tracked down an FBI profiler, interviewed a victim’s brother, built timelines out of decades-old case files and identified several new victims. They brought in a true-crime podcaster who was already poking around the killings, developed their own profile of the killer and landed on a theory of the cases that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation eventually supported.

Their work became the basis of their own 2024 true-crime podcast, . Later that year, Campbell gathered a new group of students to continue the work 鈥� it became the basis for an of the same name that in July cracked the streaming service鈥檚 rankings.

In an interview, Campbell said the daunting project succeeded not because his students found the work easy 鈥� just the opposite, actually. 

鈥淚 make it obvious to them up front that this is going to be very hard, but they’re going to be invested, and so that makes it easy to do hard work,鈥� he said. 鈥淚f you ask people about the most meaningful experiences of their life, they’re almost always hard.鈥�

That insight sits at the center of a conversation now surfacing among educators. As generative AI drafts essays, solves equations and summarizes novels in seconds, a growing number of teachers say the technology has stripped away the last excuse schools have to address a problem they鈥檝e long avoided: chronically low student motivation.

AI didn’t create the crisis, they argue. It just exposed it. In the process, the technology, which relies on random word generation, could help make deeper learning a must-have feature of K-12 education.

鈥楢 very transactional educational process鈥�

In interviews, Campbell and others described a kind of one-two punch that schools have withstood since the COVID pandemic in 2020 and, more recently, the advent of AI models such as ChatGPT. 

Since COVID, many students have simply concluded that school attendance is optional, said Campbell. 鈥淲hy do I need to go down there when I can watch YouTube videos and get on Khan Academy and you can send [work] to me through Canvas?鈥� he said. 

His answer: School must now offer challenging-but-doable experiences that students can鈥檛 get anywhere else.

This idea is by no means new 鈥� at other schools, students have worked with engineering firms to design houses, built a smartphone app for a children鈥檚 hospital and, in one case, helped planners rethink what services Kansas City鈥檚 updated airport needs. At one New Mexico high school, students can now earn FAA certification to operate drones designed to modernize farming techniques on their families鈥� ancestral land. 

Many scholars trace the movement鈥檚 roots back nearly half a century. In the mid-1980s, educator Seymour Papert, the co-founder, popularized the phrase 鈥渉ard fun.鈥� A developer of the computer language , Papert reportedly once heard a student describing how fun he found a difficult coding assignment, later , 鈥淚 have no doubt that this kid called the work fun because it was hard rather than in spite of being hard.鈥�

Then as now, the idea was something of an alien concept in most schools.

Chris Hulleman, a University of Virginia researcher and founder of the university鈥檚 , has been studying student motivation for more than 20 years 鈥� he wrote his 2007 doctoral dissertation on the topic and noted that student complaints about schoolwork鈥檚 lack of relevance go back much further. 鈥淲e have just not done a great job overall in education in making school interesting and relevant to kids,鈥� he said.

Much of that stems from a basic structure that prioritizes efficiency, usually in the form of higher scores on standardized tests. 鈥淚f that’s the primary output we’re looking for,鈥� Hulleman said, 鈥測ou’re not going to have a very interesting system. And that’s sort of what we repeatedly do.鈥�

But over the past four years, he and others said, AI has introduced its own kind of brutal efficiency, one that removes the key steps that have long forced students to at least go through the motions of an assignment. In a sense, Hulleman said, the social contract between kids and schools has changed.

鈥淭hey’re questioning the 鈥榳hy,鈥� and then they’re looking at what they’re being asked to do,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd if it’s boring or seems stupid to them, then yeah: Why wouldn’t I use this free thing that’s at my fingertips?鈥�

Recent research suggests that millions of students are reaching for the free thing: The College Board that the share of high school students using AI for schoolwork rose from 79% to 84% between January and May 2025, with about half using AI to brainstorm, revise essays or research topics. 

A from the University of Southern California found that most college students default to what researchers call 鈥渆xecutive help,鈥� using AI to get a fast answer with minimal effort, rather than 鈥渋nstrumental help鈥� that deepens understanding 鈥� unless a professor actively steers them in the other direction.

Left to their own devices, researchers found, students tend to take the AI path of least resistance, even if they learn less.

Darren Lam, 18, a recent graduate of New York鈥檚 , said that while many of his classmates won鈥檛 use AI on principle, many others use it to automate school, despite concerns about academic integrity. They鈥檙e 鈥渏ust not even really at school anymore 鈥� basically the AI is the student.鈥�

Even students who haven鈥檛 taken their AI use that far, he said, are still using it to do 鈥渦ndesirable assignments鈥� or to get 鈥渟ome sort of additional time benefit that they probably wouldn’t have if they were completely honest with their work.鈥�

Colorado math teacher Dylan Kane, who writes the Substack newsletter , said AI is automating cognitive effort at a scale far beyond earlier tools such as calculators or search engines. He used the metaphor of indoor plumbing, which freed people from hauling water, but which also erased the daily walking that once kept them healthy. As a result, people typically got less exercise. 

But he and others worry that AI might be automating cognition faster than we can find other ways to incentivize it. In the long run, he said, chatbots might be contributing to a reversal of , the decades-long rise in IQ scores generally attributed to a more cognitively demanding world. Though the phenomenon predates 2022, educators like Kane say AI is certainly worsening the slide.

鈥淧eople are getting dumber,鈥� he said, 鈥渁nd this is a cross-generational phenomenon.鈥�

The response, Kane said, should be similar to the one we turned to when walking became optional: 鈥淢y take is that we should just be honest about what’s happening.鈥� 

Invoking Papert鈥檚 principle of 鈥渉ard fun,鈥� he noted, 鈥淥ne of the best ways to get someone hooked on exercise is to get them doing something hard, but within reach, show them the progress they make when they put effort in, and hope to create a situation where that effort is self-sustaining. We should, I think, put the same effort into 鈥榗ognitive exercise.鈥欌��

For many students, that might still be academic learning 鈥� reading, writing and math, etc. For others, it might be chess, robotics, woodworking, debate, drama and the like. 鈥淪hould those play a larger role in today’s public education?鈥� he said. 鈥淚 think there’s a good argument the answer is yes, not only as something to expose students to, but something to try and help students get good at, to experience hard fun, to show themselves what their minds are capable of.鈥�

Rebecca Winthrop, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of the 2025 book , said that when tools like ChatGPT AI arrived in 2022, they came face-to-face with a school culture already ripe for change. AI quickly became layered over 鈥渨hat has become, sadly, a very transactional educational process.鈥�

In a , fewer than half of middle- and high-school students said their coursework challenges them or gives them the opportunity to do what they do best. It found that just 17% 鈥渟trongly agreed鈥� with the assertion: 鈥淚n the last seven days, I have learned something interesting at school.鈥�

What鈥檚 worse, Winthrop said, AI arrived at a time when what it means to be well-educated is rapidly changing. For decades, most students could coast through school, learning basic literacy and numeracy and still find their footing in the job market. That’s no longer true. 鈥淵ou’ve got to have a lot of higher-order thinking skills,鈥� she said. 鈥淭he bar has shifted, and it鈥檚 much higher.鈥�

Educator Priten Soundar-Shah, author of the recent book : How Educators Can Lead on AI and Digital Safety in K-12, said teachers can use that dynamic to their advantage. If students, for instance, scoff at foreign language instruction, insisting that their AI-powered make French class obsolete, ask them who they鈥檇 rather rely on in a pinch in Paris: a fluent French speaker or someone standing there waiting for their earbuds to process the conversation?

Students get the difference, he and others said. Perhaps as a result they鈥檙e often more conflicted about AI than adults might assume. They genuinely want to learn and are uneasy about assignments they could easily 鈥渉ack,鈥� Winthrop said, but they worry about being the only one in class to refuse a shortcut 鈥� a sort of academic in which each person thinks primarily about their own welfare.

Ben Riley, founder of and the think tank , described the dilemma more bluntly: Students, he said, 鈥渄on鈥檛 want to be suckers.鈥� If classmates are using AI to boost their grades, few teens would want to fall behind doing school the hard way.

Ask students why they go to school, said , an Ohio State University educational psychologist, and the answers typically split into two camps: some say they’re there to learn, but many say they’re there to get grades. When teachers emphasize tests and grades over mastery, he said, cheating rises; when the message shifts to learning, it falls off sharply. 

Anderman, who studies motivation and academic dishonesty, typically tells pre-service teachers, 鈥溾�楢鈥� stands for 鈥榓rtificial.鈥� We made it up.鈥� He added, 鈥淲e need to do a better job of training teachers to not talk so much about the test.鈥�

鈥業 deserve meaningful work鈥� 

While events of the past four years have forced teachers to rethink motivation, Campbell, the Tennessee teacher whose school is located near Knoxville, said the dilemma was on his mind nearly a decade ago when he conceived of the cold-case project. 

Inviting students to solve a problem that no one 鈥� not even experts 鈥� can solve sends a powerful message, he said. 鈥淭hat really tells kids, 鈥楬e does believe that I can do something. He does believe I can be anything I want to be. He does believe I deserve meaningful work that has real consequences.鈥欌��

The key was in easing students into the cases鈥� complexity, not just dropping them into it. 鈥淚 try to build them a ladder,鈥� he said. 鈥溾�楯ust step up on the first rung.鈥欌��

That may be meeting with a victim鈥檚 brother to hear a family鈥檚 story. Then he invites students to meet with police and go through case files. 鈥淏efore you know it, they’re building timelines,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey’re doing profiles, they’re doing geographic studies, and then they slowly begin to step up and realize they’re learning the skills, they’re meeting the people.鈥�

But what really made the project work, he said, was its authenticity 鈥� and how it visibly helped victims鈥� families. 

鈥淜ids can spot a fake in about two seconds,鈥� said Campbell. 鈥淭hey know when you’re fake. They know when your problem is fake. So whenever you say, 鈥極h, this is an important problem,鈥� they鈥檙e like, 鈥楴o, it’s not, because the answer’s in the back of the book. That’s stupid. Somebody already found the answer.鈥� 鈥�

Nearly a decade after Campbell first brought the cold cases to students, many questions remain unanswered, foremost among them who actually did the killings. But the projects have activated his students like little else could, largely because the inquiries have given victims鈥� families hope for justice.

Ulcca Joshi Hansen, an education researcher, futurist and author of the 2021 book , said teachers like Campbell, who draw students into big, relatively high-stakes projects, are tracing what may be our only logical path to progress in the Age of AI. Project-based schools like , the private in Idaho, in California and those in the network nationwide, she said, take as a given that an education built around intrinsic motivation, not extrinsic markers such as grades, simply works.

Big Picture schools, for instance, are small, personalized high schools built around career-focused aspirations and a seemingly endless parade of internships with local businesses and nonprofits. And while a few students focus early on dream careers, most spend four years zig-zagging through multiple internships and experiences, often in wildly divergent fields. 

Hansen said schools can also learn from youth development programs such as and summer camps, which offer kids access to real-world, often challenging activities. 鈥淵ou have to start with young people being invited into their education around things that they care about,鈥� she said. 

The obstacle, in her view, is less pedagogical than structural: our accountability system is still anchored to sit-down, written standardized tests that effectively tell schools, 鈥淵ou don’t know math if you can build something. You only know it if you can show it on a piece of paper.鈥�

Educator Soundar-Shah said redesigning assessments could be a key part of solving the motivation crisis. He has moved toward what amounts to a in which students spend their out-of-class time reading books, watching video lectures or even interacting with AI chatbots role-playing as historical figures. That frees up class time for discussion, debate and writing 鈥� under his supervision. 

鈥淚 don’t do any instructional time during class,鈥� he said. In its place, very often, are assessments in the form of in-class presentations. 鈥淭here’s no point in offloading your conversations to an AI chatbot if you’re going to have to show up to class and still demonstrate that knowledge tomorrow,鈥� he said. 

He’s also increasingly drawn to , which lets students retake assessments until they’ve actually learned the material rather than treating a single test as a final verdict.

Whatever happens, said Hansen, change is badly overdue: 鈥淔or 10 years, we’ve had moment after moment after moment where the invitation to the dominant system has been actually, 鈥楻edesign and let go of some of the stuff you鈥檙e holding so tightly onto.鈥欌�� 

While teachers like Campbell and Soundar-Shah are looking at redesigning the education system, Hansen said, most remain satisfied 鈥渢weaking and altering it to try and make it work better 鈥� and bludgeoning kids to do it better, or do more of it. And that has not worked.鈥�

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