Get computers out of class, and don't let AI in

Putting a personal computer on every desk was a mistake, writes Oren Cass. AI will make it worse.

We know that "children learn when they have a relationship with a teacher, when they are engaged, when they interact, when they figure things out," he writes. Some teachers aren't very good, but technology can't fill the gap.

The best evidence for the dangers of technology, he argues, is "the behavior of the technologists in the wealthy communities who design the products but want them out of their own children’s classrooms."

We also should note that intensive investment in digitizing classrooms hasn't led to educational gains, Cass writes. That money could have spent elsewhere.

AI will "offer counterproductive shortcuts for not only unengaged students, but also their teachers," he writes. Inevitably, low-income students will be assigned AI "tutors" and allowed to turn in AI-generated assignments.

He wants the Masters of the Tech Universe to use their big brains to stop its chatbots from doing kids' schoolwork for them. Losing the cheaters' market is worth less than what they'd gain in goodwill, Cass argues.

Schools should get computers out of classrooms, he writes. Teach students that learning "is a habit of mind; that reading is done by closely studying the words on a page, not answering multiple choice questions to proceed more quickly through gamified levels; that science is about making sense of the natural world through experimentation, not being entertained by YouTube videos."

"When they need to learn how to use digital technology, and how AI might someday, maybe, make them more productive in completing tasks that they have already learned to actually do themselves . . . walk them down to the computer lab," Cass concludes.

"The tech industry's campaign to embed artificial intelligence chatbots in classrooms is accelerating," reports Natasha Singer in the New York Times Magazine. The American Federation of Teachers plans to open "an A.I. training hub for educators with $23 million in funding from three leading chatbot makers: Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic."

In February, the California State University system announced it will provide ChatGPT for its 460,000 students, writes Singer. "This spring, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the third-largest U.S. school district, began rolling out Google’s Gemini A.I. for more than 100,000 high schoolers."

The Trump administration wants U.S. companies and nonprofit groups to fund AI technology and training materials for schools, teachers and students, she writes. "Dozens of companies have signed on, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI."