When Children Are Given Real Problems to Solve, Education Changes

DISCOVERING AI: Igniting Human Potential
By Amy D. Love, Founder of DISCOVERING AI and of the Global FAMILY AI GAME PLAN initiative

What happens when children are given a real problem to solve?

They rise.

I was reminded of this again watching students participate in the Future City® Competition. The ideas coming out of these teams were thoughtful, ambitious, and grounded in real world constraints. Clean energy systems. Smarter transportation. Inclusive design. Resilient infrastructure. These were not small school projects. They were young minds applying research, search tools, collaboration, and creativity to imagine how the world could work better.

Future City is not new. It has been quietly shaping how students learn for more than 30 years.

A Program That Endured for a Reason

The Future City Competition began in 1992, growing out of early conversations at IEEE-USA about how to engage middle school students in engineering and systems thinking. More than three decades later, it continues to involve tens of thousands of students each year across the country.

Programs do not last this long by accident. They last because they work.

Future City understood something early that education systems are still working to scale. Students learn more deeply when they are asked to apply knowledge, not simply retain it. When learning is tied to a meaningful challenge, motivation changes. Ownership increases. Confidence grows.

Learning That Looks Like Real Life

Spend time with a Future City team and you see learning in motion.

Students research energy sources and environmental tradeoffs. They debate transportation systems and urban density. They think through accessibility, climate resilience, housing, and infrastructure. They build physical models using recycled materials. They add electrical moving parts. They test. They fail. They fix. They try again.

They also learn something harder to teach.

They learn how to work together.

Imagine a team of ten students. Each arrives with a different level of interest, confidence, and willingness to put in the work. Some want to stay late. Others lose momentum. Disagreements happen. Leadership emerges. Compromise becomes necessary.

That friction is not a flaw. It is the lesson.

This is not hypothetical learning. It is applied learning.

Research Is Clear on What Works

Decades of research reinforce what programs like Future City demonstrate in practice. Project based learning improves student engagement, deepens conceptual understanding, and strengthens problem solving skills. Studies published in the American Educational Research Journal and supported by organizations like the Buck Institute for Education show that students in project based environments outperform peers on tasks requiring analysis, reasoning, and application.

When students learn through doing, they retain more. They care more. They grow more.

Education Knows It Needs to Change

This matters because education is at an inflection point.

Information is no longer scarce. Search engines and AI systems can surface answers in seconds. Memorization as a primary measure of success is losing relevance. What matters now is how students use information.

• Can they evaluate sources

• Can they ask better questions

• Can they synthesize ideas

• Can they collaborate

• Can they turn insight into action

Education leaders know this. School systems across the country are exploring experiential learning, interdisciplinary projects, and competency based models. The challenge is scale and consistency.

Future City offers a proven blueprint.

Where You See Students Come Alive

One of the most powerful aspects of Future City is how it stretches students beyond what they expect of themselves.

As Rekha Kannan, engineering and computer science teacher at Stratford Middle School, has shared about the competition:

“This is such a unique experience. Students work with real constraints. They reuse materials. They figure out how to make things move. They learn how to collaborate when not everyone wants to put in the same effort. You watch them grow into roles they did not know they were capable of taking on.”

You can see it happen. Quiet students step into leadership. Confident students learn humility. Teams wrestle with tradeoffs that do not have clean answers.

That is real learning.

From Knowing to Doing

One of the most important shifts underway in education is the move from knowing to doing.

Traditional systems rewarded recall. Future ready systems reward application.

In the Future City competition, students are not rewarded for finding a single correct answer. They are rewarded for thoughtful design, clear communication, resilience, and teamwork. These are the same attributes that show up in effective workplaces, strong communities, and meaningful leadership.

This is exactly why I talk about six essential traits across both of my books. In RAISING ENTREPRENEURS: Preparing Kids for Success in the Age of AI and DISCOVERING AI: A Parent's Guide to Raising Future-Ready Kids, I make the same case again and again. Preparing children for the Age of AI is not about mastering tools or memorizing information. It is about developing the human capabilities that endure.

Adaptability. Critical thinking. Creativity. Emotional intelligence. Tech fluency. An entrepreneurial mindset.

Experiences like Future City bring those traits to life.

Hands On Does Not Mean Low Tech

There is a misconception that experiential learning is less rigorous or less technical. The opposite is true.

Future City requires students to integrate science, engineering, math, writing, and presentation skills. They must articulate ideas clearly. They must defend decisions. They must understand tradeoffs. Many teams also use digital tools to research, design, and iterate.

This is not technology avoidance. It is technology with intention.

The goal is not to shield children from tools. The goal is to guide them in how to use knowledge, search, and technology to build, design, and improve the world around them.

A Blueprint Worth Expanding

Future City has proven something important for more than three decades.

When children are trusted with meaningful problems, clear constraints, and the opportunity to build, they rise to the challenge.

The opportunity now is to expand programs like this. Not just as competitions or electives, though those matter. We need more learning experiences embedded into the fabric of education that prioritize application over memorization.

• More real world challenges

• More interdisciplinary projects

• More collaboration

• More making

• More reflection

This is not about abandoning rigor. It is about redefining it.

Preparing Children for What Comes Next

We are raising the first generation to grow up alongside AI as a constant presence. That reality makes human skills more valuable, not less.

Judgment. Creativity. Ethics. Empathy. Systems thinking.

These capabilities do not develop through worksheets alone. They develop through experience.

Future City shows us what is possible when education shifts from consumption to creation.

It shows us what happens when students are trusted with complexity.

They rise.

And if we are serious about preparing children to thrive in the Age of AI, this is exactly the kind of learning we should be building more of.

What hands on experience do you wish every child had access to?

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