Dr. Leah Hanes has spent countless hours wrestling with a question that keeps most educators up at night: Why does a child who can’t sit still for 20 minutes of homework willingly play video games for four hours straight?
The answer, she believes, isn’t about limiting screen time or banning technology from classrooms. It’s about fundamentally reimagining what education looks like in an age where artificial intelligence is reshaping every industry — and doing it before an entire generation gets left behind.
“We were raised and educated in a system designed for the Industrial Revolution,” Hanes explains. “And we live in the age of artificial intelligence, which is changing every industry and nearly every career. It’s on us to prepare this next generation of students for the reality of living in a highly technical world, and we are not well prepared for that task.”
Hanes isn’t proposing minor reforms or incremental improvements to curriculum. She’s calling for a complete revolution in education — one that borrows from an unlikely source.
The Atari Founder’s Challenge
When Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, approached Hanes to co-author a book, he posed a deceptively simple challenge: Why not make education as interesting as video games?
The question struck a nerve. Bushnell acknowledges his role in creating addictive gaming experiences that have parents battling their children over screen time. But Hanes sees that addictive quality as a feature, not a bug — if it can be redirected toward learning.
“We’ve tried a lot of things in education, but we seem not to have considered making education addictive,” she says.
The current approach to educational technology, Hanes argues, is fundamentally flawed. Schools hand students devices capable of running immersive, engaging experiences, then ask them to complete mundane homework assignments on those same screens. The mismatch creates an impossible situation where entertainment and drudgery compete for attention on identical platforms.
“We’re asking children to take complete, very boring homework tasks on the same device they would play video games on,” Hanes points out. The problem isn’t the technology itself — it’s what educators are asking students to do with it.
AI as Research Partner, Not Threat
Hanes’ most controversial stance may be her full-throated advocacy for bringing artificial intelligence into elementary and middle school classrooms. While many educational institutions ban or severely restrict AI tools, she views that approach as dangerously shortsighted.
“Not allowing students access to artificial intelligence, in my opinion, is a mistake,” Hanes states. “Children currently in elementary school are going to have far more sophisticated versions of this than we can even imagine. Why not harness it?”
She envisions AI functioning as both research assistant and executive assistant for students — with a critical caveat. Students must verify every fact and check every piece of work the AI produces. This approach, she argues, teaches valuable skills for a world where AI tools will be ubiquitous.
Her proposed model flips traditional assessment on its head. Instead of submitting papers to teachers for grading, students would present their findings to classmates and field questions that prove they’ve mastered the material. If they can demonstrate genuine learning, the mechanics of how the work reached the page become irrelevant.
One school in Nigeria has already demonstrated what’s possible. By giving every child access to an AI tutor, the public school has achieved remarkable results that challenge assumptions about resource requirements and educational equity.
A Personal Mission
For Hanes, this isn’t just theoretical. As someone with dyslexia, she knows firsthand the humiliation of being judged on presentation rather than understanding. “This would have saved me years of humiliation,” she reflects.
Her personal experience informs her conviction that current educational systems punish students for differences in how they process and express information — differences that become irrelevant when the focus shifts to demonstrated knowledge rather than standardized formats.
The revolution Hanes envisions requires educators, parents, and policymakers to let go of assumptions rooted in Industrial Age thinking. Assembly-line education made sense when the goal was producing factory workers who could follow instructions and perform repetitive tasks. But today’s students need to navigate ambiguity, verify information, leverage powerful tools, and demonstrate creative problem-solving.
Those skills can’t be taught through worksheets and standardized tests. They require engagement, curiosity, and yes — even a touch of that addictive quality that makes video games so compelling.
“I’m here to declare that I will be part of the revolution in education, and I’m inviting you to join me,” Hanes says.
The invitation isn’t just for educators. It’s for parents tired of bedtime battles over screens, administrators searching for solutions to declining engagement, and anyone who recognizes that preparing students for tomorrow’s world requires something radically different from yesterday’s classroom.
The question isn’t whether education will change. Technology ensures it must. The only question is whether the revolution will happen deliberately, with intention and purpose, or whether schools will continue retrofitting Industrial Age models until they become completely irrelevant to the students they claim to serve.
