Schools Push Back on AI Faster Than They Did on Coding — SkimNews
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- Natasha Singer's new book "Coding Kids" documents how Apple, Microsoft, and Google spent 15 years embedding their tools and curricula into K-12 education, training students to become future customers and a willing workforce.
- Apple and Microsoft each built proprietary AP Computer Science Principles curricula — Apple's Swift and Microsoft's Minecraft — letting the companies directly shape what students learned in those courses.
- Google distributed low-cost Chromebooks across schools through the 2010s, a presence accelerated by COVID-19 shutdowns, and layered in its Classroom app for managing assignments and grades.
- Code.org launched a viral celebrity campaign featuring Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg urging kids to learn to code, with founder Hadi Partovi taking a startup-style approach to promoting computer science education nationwide.
- New York City banned elementary and middle schools from letting students use AI in classrooms for the coming school year, and Los Angeles followed a day later with even broader restrictions that include high schoolers.
- Recent graduates told Singer they feel let down that coding was sold as a ticket to high-paying jobs that diminished by the time they entered the workforce, while some schools are phasing out Chromebooks and global research finds adding tech to classrooms often doesn't significantly boost learning.
Why it matters: Singer argues parents want more than teaching kids to use tech — they want informed citizens who can question how companies design software to steer choices. Unlike the years-long silence that greeted Chromebooks and Code.org, NYC and LA moved to restrict student AI use before mass adoption. That timing shift forces AI vendors to win trust in classrooms, not just hand out free curriculum and hope for inertia.
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