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.