by Dan Burns

Apr 25, 2026, 9:30 AM

Lots of experts want a halt to AI in schools

From April 16:

Researchers, doctors, and child development experts have studied what generative AI does to developing brains. Their conclusion: It shouldn’t be anywhere near a classroom, and action should be taken immediately.

“We just don’t want to waste another 10 years in which our kids’ education is undermined,” Leonie Haimson, cochair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, told Fortune. “It took more than 10 years to ban cell phones from schools. We can’t afford that again.”
(Yahoo News)

There’s no way to specify how much of what’s holding back primary/secondary education in the US is tech in schools, how much is high-stakes standardized testing, how much is underfunding, how much is efforts at privatization (like vouchers and the charter industry), and how much is suspicion of too much “book-learning” among part of the populace. But tech hasn’t improved things – quite the contrary – and I see no reason whatsoever to think that it will. Even if helping kids learn really did somehow replace Big Tech’s greed and lust for power as the primary motive.

As far as I’m concerned you can definitely detect a note – indeed, an entire symphony – of increasing desperation in the AI hype these days, and it’s easy to see why. So far it’s pretty much of a bust, and the populace knows it.

When it comes to primary and secondary education some fundamental realities haven’t changed in my lifetime at least. Kids who go to well-funded, not overcrowded schools, and who are growing up in economically stable homes where academic achievement is given considerable emphasis and support, will tend to do well in school. Kids who lack one or more of those advantages will generally not do so well. Those are the things that need to change, and AI sure as hell isn’t going to fix them.

Comment from Joe Musich: We have gone backwards since the roughly the 1980s in terms of achievement across the board in demographics. With the beginnings of desegregation disparity in race and class diminished. Then along came Raygun who affected both race and class with his bullshit tax plan. On top of that he and his people snuffed out the fairness doctrine giving us the likes of Rush, and increasing the numbers of radio and then TV stations one company could own. The communications chicken was choked even more since then, giving us a father and son in control of lots of the main media. I watched Brian Selzer for a bit on CNN this morning and could have gagged. I had hope for his reporting on the media a few years ago. Now he has climbed up in to the far reaches of corporate media. Even tho Substack seems to be conservatively owned the people seem to be all there is for counterpoint. And Meglomalnia is going after Kimmel again. But I digress. AI in its current state does no more belong in a classroom than Pennywise the Dancing Clown.