KPMG’s chief people officer said graduates will spend more time “reviewing and exercising judgment rather than simply producing outputs.” PwC has added debating sessions. EY now names problem-solving – critical reasoning – and teamwork as the skills that grow more important as technology evolves. Deloitte is cultivating communication, adaptability, and resilience. 

These firms sift through thousands of applications and invest millions in training. And they are saying – in public – that the scarce skill is not keystrokes. It is human judgment. 

That is today’s AI. The question before JAA is larger. What remains valuable if the machine becomes not merely faster…but superintelligent – if it can draft the analysis…write the brief…and generate the options? 

What remains is not another software certificate. What remains is the formation of a person who can decide what is worth doing – who can be trusted with the consequence…who can move other people toward the good. 

That is the work John Adams Academy already does! 

Our scholars do not merely collect answers. They enter the Great Conversation. They read primary sources. They sit in Socratic discussion and learn to ask a better question than the one the tool just answered. That is editorial judgment – the courage to say…of a fluent and confident paragraph, “This is wrong,” or “This is not the problem that matters.” 

They move through the trivium – grammar, logic, rhetoric – until they can speak with persuasion and integrity. PwC is running debate clubs for new hires. Our scholars have been practicing rhetoric as a moral art…not a performance trick. 

They are formed in private virtue and public virtue: the character to govern oneself…and the character to place the common good above preference. No model can take moral responsibility. A servant-leader can! 

They practice servant leadership – moral authority rather than positional authority. They mentor and are mentored. They assimilate principles in mock trials…constitutional conventions…and service. They are taught sovereignty: to take the chief hand in their own education. They are taught creativity and enterprise: to frame problems, not only to solve the ones handed to them. 

Superintelligence may write the memo. It cannot sit across the table and earn trust. It cannot choose what a free people ought to value. It cannot pledge its honor. It cannot love a country, a family, or a neighbor enough to sacrifice for them. 

The companies have discovered…late…that human skills are the premium. John Adams Academy was built on that discovery from the first day. We are not preparing operators of the next tool. We are forming keepers and defenders – thinkers…citizens…entrepreneurs…and statesmen – who will still be needed when the tool can do almost everything except be human. 

That is America’s heritage. That is our mission. And that is why the work of this school still matters.