I remember when I was in high school, several of my math teachers used to say:
“No calculators. You won’t always have one with you.”
All while simultaneously telling me they were preparing me for my future. I expand on this story in two of my keynotes.
That argument didn’t age well. What it mostly did was delay access to a tool students would later be expected to use fluently, often without contextual guidance.
That parallel stayed with me while reading this recent NPR piece about a teacher going almost entirely analog to keep AI out of her classroom.
While I agree that human thinking, writing, and voice must be centered, I also know that learning valuable digital skills is equally important. Students need to learn how to form arguments, wrestle with ideas, and develop intellectual agency. Those foundations still matter, and they can occur within a technology-rich learning environment.
What I don’t agree with is the idea that exclusion is how we get there.
Treating AI as something students must be shielded from, rather than something they must learn to question, critique, and use responsibly, creates a false binary: Thinking or Technology. Use or Not Use. Red Pill or Blue Pill. We’ve seen this movie before.
AI does not inherently replace writing or thinking. Poorly designed learning does. Ineffective assessments do. A lack of intentionality does.
Many foundational uses of AI actually require students to understand thesis, evidence, revision, tone, perspective, and audience. Without those skills, the tool fails, or worse, misleads.
There’s also an equity issue here. Keeping AI out of classrooms doesn’t keep it out of students’ lives. It simply ensures that some students will encounter it without critical framing, ethical grounding, or instructional support.
I also hope future coverage expands the lens. Several recent pieces from the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism in collaboration with NPR have focused on limiting or detecting AI use in schools (I wrote a previous post on this). That’s one part of the story, but not the whole one. This is a prime example of the danger of a single story. Why not do a series to the effect of “Six Classrooms and Six Different Perspectives on AI”
This is precisely why many of us continue to call for a true understanding of what AI literacy actually means, not the mindless platitude the term is too often reduced to. Our current moment doesn’t call for abstinence or uncritical adoption. It calls for intentional learning design.
Design that asks:
What thinking must come first?
When does a tool extend cognition versus hinder or replace it?
How do we build agency before automation?
How do we balance efficiency and efficacy?
This should not be distilled into an analog vs. AI debate.
It’s a question of intentional pedagogy, paired with relevant and responsive contemporary learning experiences.
The NPR Article can be found here