The Uses of Freedom

Infinite Education by Dan Fitzpatrick
TeacherGoals Publishing, January 3, 2025

What separates the school that thrives in the age of AI from the one that quietly becomes irrelevant? According to Dan Fitzpatrick, it isn't technology but rather leadership vision. Drawing on James Carse's distinction between finite and infinite games, Fitzpatrick argues that most schools are stuck playing a finite game: optimizing for test scores, managing the present, and treating graduation as an endpoint. His four-step framework — Scope, Shape, Influence, Align — urges leaders to move from reactive AI adoption toward something more deliberate. The book's most practical contribution is its distinction between linear innovation, including using AI to make existing systems more efficient, and nonlinear innovation, such as using AI to rethink what school is for entirely. Fitzpatrick builds on his framework with a nine-step Centre of Excellence model that turns aspiration into an implementation sequence. For independent and international school leaders, the message is direct: the autonomy that defines these institutions carries an obligation to act where public systems, constrained by policy cycles, cannot. More than just another broadside about AI tools, this is a book about what leaders might do with the freedom they already have.