Paul Keeling: The Vancouver School District isn’t listening to parents’ concerns. Instead, Instead, the “plan” is to give the technology to teachers and students and let them figure it out, like guinea pigs
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School’s out for summer. If the Vancouver School District has its way, school will be very different this fall.
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In May, the district announced its plan to bring Microsoft Copilot (a generative AI chatbot) into classrooms, a fundamental change in education, with virtually no public input or discussion.
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This development is not surprising, given the current AI hype and the staggering amount of money behind it. The surprise is how school administrators are rushing to get AI into the hands (and minds) of teachers and students, citing no evidence of its educational value, while ignoring evidence to the contrary.
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Even if AI chatbots were a reliable source of information (which they are not), there is growing evidence that AI harms learning. AI use is correlated with worse learning outcomes, poorer critical thinking, reduced ability to accurately judge one’s own performance, and reduced ability to discern misinformation over time. AI chatbots agree with users, even when users are factually incorrect. Research also indicates that when the AI crutch is taken away, students that have used AI tend to perform worse than those who have never used it, and using AI as a sole study aid is worse for comprehension and retention than just taking conventional notes. The majority of students use AI to solve problems for them, rather than to learn. When adult professionals rely on AI tools, they lose skills.
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Ironically, despite clichés about teaching “critical thinking,” school administrators are not critically evaluating an untested and unproven technology before launching it. When the negative effects of smartphones were understood, their use in classrooms was restricted. The burden of proof clearly lies with those pushing for the new technology.
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Instead, the “plan” is to give the technology to teachers and students and let them figure it out, like guinea pigs. The industry jargon for this is “beta testing.”
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In a CBC interview on June 3, Vancouver School Board associate superintendent Pedro da Silva and Surrey school district superintendent Mark Pearmain were both adamant that Microsoft Copilot must be deployed in schools, but did not explain why or how it will be used. Both echoed familiar AI industry marketing instead.
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“For us, it’s now an opportunity for the teachers and the students to work through how to leverage the tool to support the learning environment,” De Silva said. Pearmain said he is “excited to see the opportunities that AI brings that can enhance a student’s experience in school,” with no explanation how that might occur.
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The main justification for AI chatbots in schools (echoed by Pearmain) is: “We can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”
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This argument is spurious. Obviously, any technology, once invented, cannot be uninvented. It does not follow, however, that the “genie” must go everywhere and be welcomed into every aspect of human life and functioning. It certainly need not be rushed into K-12 education with no real understanding of its educational, psychological and social impacts.
