The Verge ran a story this weekend that stopped me cold. Some of the wealthiest families in the country are pulling their kids out of traditional schools and paying up to $55,000 a year for schools where an AI tutor does the teaching and a human "guide" handles the rest. Silicon Valley venture capitalists are first in line.

Here is what got me. The same families who have the most inside knowledge about how AI actually works are betting their own children on it, while the rest of us get told to slow down and be careful. That is a signal worth reading.

But when you take the model apart, the expensive part is not the technology. A learning scientist at Northwestern looked at one of these schools and could not even bring herself to call it an AI school. It is personalized pacing, daily hands on practice, and an adult keeping judgment in the loop. Every one of those ingredients is already sitting in a free browser tab in your house tonight. Six in ten teachers used an AI tool last school year. The tools are everywhere. The fluency is not.

So I want to hear from you. What is the biggest barrier you have hit when trying to build real AI skill, for yourself or your students? Is it time, confidence, knowing what to practice, or something else? I have a hunch we are all running into the same wall, and I want to see if the pattern holds.

Dive deeper in today's post: The Rich Are Buying AI Schools. Fluency Is Not for Sale. -> https://www.harvestkernel.com/ai-schools-wealthy-tuition-trap/