The Current - How should AI be used in schools?

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

With AI becoming part of the school day in classrooms across Canada we look to other countries to understand how regulation and curriculum could change the way students and teachers use AI tools.

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And so I think it can be discouraging when you're looking around the room and your peers kind of have an upper hand. I've used it for studying. Our teacher gives us like a study sheet with the topics. We cover on the test or the quiz, and I can kind of copy and paste that into chat chabit, and then it'll recount that back to me in a quiz form. Those are two high school students. with earlier this month about how AI is being used in schools. This is part of our series Learning Curve, looking at the state of public education in this country. And that conversation

prompted many of you to write in with your own thoughts and experiences in using generative AI tools in education and what the use of AI could mean for our kids' education. In a moment, you'll hear from an education researcher who's looking at how AI is being regulated and implemented in schools around the world. But first, the current senior producer, Karen Marley, is here to read some of your mail. Karen, good morning. Good morning, Matt. So Larry Till is a fellow at the Verklin School of Education at the University of Calgary, and he wrote, I was fascinated to hear from one of the young students you spoke to that his teachers hadn't mentioned AI at the start of the school year. That points to a huge gap in the system, which is understandable, given its

protracted focus on treating AI only as a matter of academic integrity. I recently published an article on the role of AI in civic literacy. The basic argument is this, whatever its threats and risks, and they are legion, AI offers educators a superb opportunity to make critical thinking sexy again. By teaching our students how to use AI tools ethically and responsibly, we can help them develop the skills they need to become capable, critical, and engaged citizens. Make critical thinking sexy again. Hooray, Larry. Victoria Malloy and Peachland, British Columbia, writes, I retired and recently started using chat GPT as a nearly diverse person. I have encountered many struggles educationally throughout my life. Now having used chat GPT to help me with

getting my ideas into a cohesive form, I'm able to spend a fraction of the time getting things onto the page. My ideas are sound, my use of language is strong, but where I struggle is arranging all that into well-ordered writing. I do not copy, but instead take suggestions from what it gives me, which sparks my own ideas of how to say it in my own way. I'm finding it to be a very useful tool. And if I had this available to me in my school years, I would have benefited immensely. Colin Wilful and Edmonton writes, I'm a parent of kids enrolled in university, and I'm a recently retired junior high social studies and English language arts teacher. In the latter part of my career, AI generated content began to emerge as some students sought a shortcut. In fairness,

did I use AI as a teacher? Sure. It made, for example, conjuring up comprehension quizzes for a YouTube video posted on new sites such as CBC, easy and efficient. That said, I worked diligently to ensure that I curated these learning opportunities to help students align their efforts with important program outcomes. Most important, AI-generated output was put through my own professional filter to evaluate the output for relevance and accuracy. That only happens if a teacher already knows their stuff. Students attempting to offload the cognitive demands of tasks like these often use AI less as a writing tutor to help express their well-informed analysis and more as a ghost writer. To leave their readers with the impression they held an in-depth understanding

or insights into concepts that they in fact have not yet developed. Finally, this email comes from Duncan McDowell in Quebec. In my point of view, a curriculum update is the single most important matter here. Amendments to include learning about our larger social relationships to AI as a culture to go beyond the basics of properly prompting artificial intelligence to some of your mail on this subject. Karen, thank you very much. You're welcome. Karen Marley, senior producer here at the current. Tracy Burns is the chief of global strategy and research for the National Center on Education and the Economy based in Washington, D.C., and she spent a lot of time thinking about researching how AI is changing the way that teachers teach and students learn around the world.

Tracy, good morning. And good morning, Matt. I want to talk about the good and the bad in a moment. But just briefly, how would you describe how AI is being used in classrooms in this country? Well, I love the letters because they really covered a lot of the spectrum. I mean, it's being used by students to do their homework. It's being used, by the way, also for fun. And it's being used by teachers for lesson planning, for assessment purposes.

There's a whole host of different uses, which are really interesting. And one of the things I think that's really important to underline is it's not just whether or not the tool is used, but how it's used. One of the letters really called that out about the critical interface and being diligent. And I think that's one of the things we really need to keep in mind when we're having this discussion. Is that comparable to how AI is being used in classrooms around the world? Again, this technology is sort of emerging at this breakneck pace, and we're all trying to come to terms with it as it is being developed. But are other jurisdictions perhaps ahead of where we are in terms of figuring out how to integrate it into the class?

I think, I mean, it depends what you mean by integrate. There certainly is, as you're exactly right, it's a breakneck pace, and it is happening all over the world. One of the things we've seen a real standout is some of the systems, like Singapore, for example, who has been integrating it in lesson planning and a lot of their work all the way through from very young ages, so really intentionally building it into the system. Korea is another example that has really embraced the use of AI and teaching not just, AI skills, but critical thinking and what that means to critically engage with AI. So those are some of the systems which are taking a slightly different stance than Canada, for

example. But there's a lot of activity everywhere. Tell me more about this. I mean, how can it be used for good, do you think? Because we hear, and we'll talk about, you know, the horror stories, but from your perspective, as somebody who has studied this, how can this technology be used as a tool for good? I think there's huge possibilities. So, you know, the promise of AI is that it helps you be more efficient, saves time. If you're a teacher, it frees you up to, for example, you know, spend more time on the harder elements of teaching and have some of the other, the easier elements, sort of, you know, grammar corrections, etc. can be done through an AI tool. It helps you, you know, if you have a class of 30 students, you can actually have different students getting different exercises because the, the exercises are being tailored for them by AI. So that real promise of personalization and the promise of efficiency, being able to be more efficient and more creative, is sort of where we see the sweet spot is.

That's the promise. And that's where we're seeing education really trying to deliver on that. The peril is, from a student's perspective, it becomes a means to an end. We heard that. We heard that at the very beginning that you look around the classroom. And it feels like as a student, if you're not using it to cheat or you're not using it to generate your ideas, that those other students are a step ahead of you. Yeah, and can I say, I thought those students were brilliant, honestly.

They were so good and so thoughtful. And, you know, I'm going to share a couple of statistics with you because just last week, Common Sense Media put out a study on this, and they were, these are American teenagers, but 13 to 18 years old, seven out of 10 said they'd used AI. but six and ten said that their school either had no rules or they're not sure if there are rules. And most parents, because they also interviewed parents, 83% of the parents said that the schools had not communicated with families about AI. So there's real mismatches in terms of what's going on and how it's being used. Do you need rules to know that you shouldn't use it to generate an idea that you were assigned to generate on your own?

Well, I guess that's, I mean, what's the assignment, right? If the assignment is you personally, you Matt, need to generate 20 ideas on your own, then that's correct. You should not be using it for that purpose. If the assignment is, you know, think of something that you, you know, think of a business plan. In fact, one of the students you interviewed had this as an example. Think of a business plan, a new product, etc. And you're feeling a little bit stuck and you're using AI to help you generate ideas and bounce them together with your teammates. and then you take from that and you build on it, I wouldn't consider that, you know, a misuse in a way. I think it's inspiring, it's adding new ideas, but then you're still doing the work yourself, you know, built on that. So it's that sort of interface, which I think is, I would consider that legitimate. How do you, in that context, preserve,

and we heard that idea of making critical thinking sexy again, preserve critical thinking, preserve the school in many ways is meant to be challenging. It's meant to push people. And the concern is that this will strip some of those challenges away, but also strip the need for critical thinking away. How do you preserve that in this ecosystem? Yeah, and that is, you know, and that is the number one question.

The important thing is, we've been having this discussion well before AI, by the way. You know, if you have grades and people were taking, you know, teaching to the test, those kinds of conversation about just trying to make the next milestone that you're supposed to make was also given as an example of how you're not. really learning deeply, you're not engaging critically with the content, you're simply trying to make a certain milestone. With AI, I think because it's infiltrated and it's built into so many products, it does mean that we have to be really thoughtful about the ways we design the exercises and how we want to push students to engage critically. There's lots of great examples from

teachers who are really gifted and pushing on the edges here. Designing, designing, uh, designing, uh, debates with AI or critically evaluating the output of AI thinking about, do I find this argument compelling? So focusing on critical thinking as an aspect of the process itself rather than having it be a byproduct of the process. Are you optimistic just finally? I mean, the technology is here, whether people like it or not, and we heard from a lot of people who said that they're very concerned, but it's here and it's in the classroom. So are you optimistic about the future of AI in schools. And the promise that kind of is being dangled in front of us, that promise being realized without cannibalizing what school is meant to be. I am optimistic. I think, you know,

so let's go back to the purpose of education, right? We've got jobs. We've got citizenship and we've got sort of individual thriving. And I think that I've, you know, looking around the world, we see a really intentional focus on all of the elements and the purpose of education. And I actually am optimistic, not just in our ability to deliver on those, but in the ability of our young people to really act as change makers and seize their power to help shape the world to be a great place. Is this going to change the purpose of education, though? That is the question. I mean, and that is a really, really big question, right? What are the skills for the future that we will need? If jobs are changing, what are the skills we would need

for jobs? And if we're working less or working in a different way, what does that mean for the skills of living and being a citizen and being an individual, how would you thrive in that environment? I think it's highly likely there will be serious shifts in the next 15 years. And that's a conversation we should be having now. I'm glad to talk to you about this. And I hope we have the chance to talk again. It is one of the issues of our time, particularly as we look at the state of public education. Tracy, thank you very much. Thank you. Tracy Burns is the chief of global strategy and research at the National Center on Education and the Economy. This has been the current podcast.

you can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.