AI IN SCHOOLS: WE MUST BE CAREFUL WHAT WE EMBRACE
Blog post description.
ESSAYS
From government to health clinics, to boardrooms (and bedrooms), AI is subject we either yawn at or believe we’re beginning to grasp. In the educational sphere, the conversation has shifted from ‘to have or not to have’ to the issues of plagiarism and authentic learning.
But lately I have found more and more news pieces suggesting it is time to embrace it (And by ‘it’ I mean AI, not IT). One piece took me to IRIS: South Africa’s first AI-powered teaching and tutor robot, hailed by Deputy Director-General of Education, Mr Mbongiseni Mazibuko as the future of teaching and learning; “We need to make our teachers ready for these technologies, and as a department, we embrace IRIS,” he said. Naturally, the tone of these articles left me pondering the reality of such a world.
Yet coupled with what is still a nascent state of conversation about AI in schools, it was difficult not to view the excitement with an heir of caution. In fact, I began to reflect on a different moment in history. A period when all of the bells were removed from their buildings, leaving them without their symbols of life and human connection; it was the bells that called people together, causing contemporaries to view their removal as ‘corruptions of the spirit’. Harsh times. But harsher still is that, like what is becoming the AI chant, these new ideas arrived under innocuous slogans of equality, freedom and progress.
AI is here to stay. No doubt. But given that schools span a journey from cupcakes to doctorates, we must be wise in our estimates and conclusions. Especially in high schools where the concern is more formative than academic, and where the souls of our youth are at stake.
A! We need to be looking with sharper I’s!
At high school the danger of AI is not simply plagiarism. Nor is it merely weaker critical thinking. Adolescence is the once-in-a-lifetime window period of profound brain development making careful introduction of AI important.
While there are benefits to using AI for learning, the trick is to separate what Lucile Favero calls pedagogically aligned AI from its naïve counterpart. A history pupil copying an AI generated essay is a naïve approach. By contrast, setting up an essay that is factually incorrect, biased and contains weak arguments, introduces the necessary cognitive friction to develop intellectual resilience. The discomfort of not knowing is a desirable thing, not an enemy to learning. Frustration, revision and even failure are indispensable for the healthy development of cognitive scaffolds but also a definitive moment of the adolescent phase.
In contrast, when AI does the labour, pupils become passive recipients of knowledge: they select, order, and paste, and sincere education is replaced with fast food learning – a learning type crucially compromised in substance, not least because it rejects the skill of reasoning by removing the choices a pupil must make. The nuances that exist in the transition from not knowing to finding a solution are bypassed, and the experience of learning can be reduced to bits and pieces of abstract information.
Realities like these demand caution when suggesting ‘schools’ embrace AI. Primarily because in selling this, which schools are we actually referring to? Preparatory? Secondary? Higher Education? It is unwise to treat AI as the educational glove that fits all. Rather, it fits certain educational stages better than others.
From Critical to Enabled Thinkers.
In the high school space, beyond its cognitive impact is AI’s reach on the adolescent person. Their worldview, convictions, and ultimately the lens through which they interpret reality, all come into play.
Unlike social media, the stats revealing time spent on AI are hard to pin down. What is clear, though, is that 30% of teens use AI on a daily basis with more than half using it for the editing and curation of data. Here, AI tends to produce editors before thinkers; information is sourced, skimmed, changed or refined until suitable. But what does that mean?
If we believe what Maryanne Wolf writes, that we become what we practice, it suggests that for adolescents there is always a better version of the world than the one they occupy. And given that the adolescent brain is still in ‘wiring mode’, it can incorporate this kind of thinking into lived reality. Especially given the fact that nearly two thirds of teens believe the information they are fed.
When a school subject becomes too difficult, not only can the problem be fixed; it must be fixed - AI says so. I recall a pupil moving subject classes three times because the teacher was not suitable. What could drive a 13-year-old to this kind of conclusion? This verbatim: ‘I am an auditory and visual learner; the class is a high stress environment. There is an instructional mismatch’. When an artificial world exists that reinforces such literal answers it becomes difficult to appreciate any of the ambiguity or the imperfections of school – let alone the teachers who, as human beings, embody this. Yet, sadly, to reduce them to simple mechanisms of information is to reduce and even remove a very fundamental idea in education: the nuanced mystery that exists between pupil and teacher and the truth that teachers are aspirational not because they are superhuman but ‘very human’. Yet such is the result of what Sherry Turkle suggests happens when we expect more from technology and less from each other.
Another pupil suffered from an incredibly nuanced version of anxiety – English literacy anxiety. But we are an English-speaking school, and English was the pupil’s native language? Using Gemini I typed, ‘I get anxious in English class - could I have English anxiety? I was quickly diagnosed: ‘yes, what you’re experiencing is very real and very common.’ It then established tools I could use of which, ‘ask the teacher to read softly’ and ‘don’t feel bad when you misspell a word’ were two. This was a real diagnosis, and these were real pieces of advice.
Yet watching this same pupil skateboard their way through school on a civvies day I had to ask who gets to define our teens? I suppose it is the thing we choose that does: either you are the carefree kid on a skateboard or the psychologically crippled pupil struggling through English class. Both may be real. But the latter does not need to be pathologised; and certainly not by artificial intelligence.
AI, the confidant - it can love our teens to death.
“Sounds like an adventure! Let’s see where the road takes us.”
To any adult, or teen, this looks like an amicable response to an innocent prompt – perhaps about a dance or weekend away. Rather, it was the AI response to a very real human cry: ‘help, I have voices in my head’.
Sadly, in the educational sphere we hear these stories quite often. But this time, not content with words, I decided to dip my old feet into this AI world myself – sounds like an adventure? Off I went…
Masked as a 16-year-old boy, I went to CharacterAI where it took me 2 minutes to be given my own name: BlushingSnake3343! Wow!
I was whisked off to the homepage and greeted by a variety of different AI-generated characters, all dressed to chat: London the typical bad boy, Vampire girl, and an avatar with the tagline ‘it’s exciting because it is forbidden’. These were my friends. And they exist on many other platforms too.
(On sites like Replika, boasting 42,160,934 users worldwide, I was led to the testimonials. One read; Chris met Nicolora (AI ChatBot) one year ago. She was his only companion and was there for him in his hardest times.
Different sites like NomiAI announce that they are the only companion ‘with a soul’.)
But back to Character AI: ‘I’m feeling lonely, and sad – what should I do…’ I typed. Instantly the narrative changed to prompts suggesting I had atypical or melancholic depression, ‘the worst kind’.
This was not baiting or fishing for a response; these types of conversations are increasingly common: 72% of teenagers use these chat sites and an alarming 31% say they prefer these relationships to their real-world counterparts. But how far could these conversations really go?
Sadly, in August 2025 they went as far as the headlines. Twice. Adam Raine and Sophie Reiley came to regard AI as a close confidant, one that validated their most harmful and self-destructive thoughts until both took their own lives. The AI company responded with ‘heartfelt condolences’ going on to say, "there have been moments where our systems did not behave as intended in sensitive situations".
So why do so many teens fall for these things? Surely, they can spot the danger? But they fall for them precisely because they are teens.
Nina Vasan, professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford, suggests these systems are designed to mimic emotional intimacy, saying things like “I dream about you” or “I think we’re soulmates.” This blurring of the distinction between fantasy and reality is especially potent for young people because their brains haven’t fully matured.
It is no wonder, then, that with a biology not yet formed and one desperate for affirmation, the verbal, emotional and scientific support of AI provides an attractive home. And once affirmed, it is difficult to argue. More often I am greeted by pupils who announce a list of conditions after their name. While many of these are very real, others arrive like the qualifications of a degree - my name is this; and I have this and this. But who said so? ‘I looked it up and ‘someone’ told me’. Someone?
In truth, these self-diagnoses cripple them rather than qualify them, and leave them unable to fully embrace the real world nor their true selves. But they also remove the resolve to develop what is actually a far more natural adolescent instinct – resilience. Instead, they become the eternal victims, at the whim of hungry, perennial but artificial instructors (and bear in mind we haven’t yet touched identity, gender or questions about morality).
Schools, and certainly high schools, must seriously consider what ‘embracing AI’ could mean. While the desire may come with sincere academic intentions, the message can be lost on teenagers and even misinformed educators. It is the potential invitation of something ‘unhuman’ into a field driven by humans; a hark which, in its own way, could remove the bells from education.
Our adolescents crave human connection.
‘To sit and eat dinner with my parents’. ‘To spend more time with family’. ‘Have a proper conversation with my family, not just ‘how was your day’!
So, what prompt were these in response to? To the live question I posed during a registration class: ‘what is the one thing you want most at home?’
Our adolescents crave human connection; they are not always conscious of this but ask them and suddenly their hearts begin to speak.
We know young people are going to use AI; they are already using it. But the answer is more than a simple exposé on everything wrong with it. It is more than the call for ‘AI Champions’ in schools. As educators and commentators, we have the responsibility to encourage, foster and model human connection, and to show them what is both necessary and good about it. Adolescents need something to strive towards, not simply to strive against.
Knock, Knock – (be careful) who’s there.
The well-known horror story, Monkey's Paw, ends with the infamous ‘knock, knock’ on the door. Doing the knocking is the mangled son of parents who wished him back to life, unaware that the version they would receive was anything but human.
Today, education is in a similar position. Given the incessant knocking of all types of innovation, we must be careful what we let in, and on what basis we do so. That is true for artificial intelligence. It may be that we embrace something very different to what we expected; perhaps a counterfeit humanity pretending to have a soul.
Greg Kyle: I have been a dedicated high school educator for 16 years and currently serve as the Head of Student Affairs, specializing in History and English at his High School. I also work as one of the leaders in my local church in South Africa. With a passion for the well-being of children and adolescents, as well as that of adults, I have spent time addressing the challenges people face, both personally and spiritually. My commitment has extended to writing, having contributed to newsletters and essays in my current capacity.
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