Schools are NOT Prepared for AI

When I was in 4th grade in the late ’90s, my friends would ask the teacher,

“Why can’t we just use our calculator to figure this out?”

The teacher gave the auto-response:

“Because you’re not always going to have a calculator.”

It’s almost precious seeing how dated that response became over time. What’s truly horrifying is that I tutored a math student in 2025 whose teacher told him the exact same thing.

K-12 teachers are unwilling or unable adapting to the emergence of AI. There have been no clear guidelines on the ethics of using AI to help with research papers, nor has there been substantial training for teachers on how to integrate AI effectively. There’s also the denial of teachers that students can and ARE using AI to complete their homework.

College seems even less prepared dealing with AI. Many of the colleges I’ve worked at had no clear policy on how to deal with plagiarism through AI. What these students don’t realize is that it’s easier knowing when a student uses AI to write a term paper when the teacher already has samples of their previous work during the semester.

Seriously, I’ve had so many students submit term papers where it was blatantly obvious it was AI since the paper sounded nothing like them. While K-12 and college students are in different stages of life, both struggle with using AI as a crutch instead of a tool.

This crippling reliance on AI is a symptom of archaic teaching methods and a sad devotion to workplace conformity. Students are taught to obsess over test results, finding the “correct answer” so they can punch in the data to complete the online modules. It’s a dauntless, mundane task void of any creativity or enjoyment.

Students should be taught how to see the bigger picture in what they’re learning. Find ways to tie the lesson into topics students find interesting, and apply what they learn in real-world scenarios. This way, the students aren’t mindlessly entering data, but critically thinking on how to solve problems with the knowledge they’ve learned.

AI can easily work as a tool in guiding students. Yet, none of these ideas work if the education system refuses to adapt. If educators continue to be blinded by academic dogma, then AI will only serve as yet another pacifier that lulls us into American mediocrity.

Th