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As we tremble, whether in fear or anticipation, about the changes artificial intelligence will bring, we risk missing a urgent danger: letting machines erase our children’s ability to learn. AI promises to “think” faster, broader and beyond us.

That sounds exciting but it spells disaster for the place we most depend on human growth: schools. As counterintuitive as it may sound, this is a moment where we actually need less technology in the classroom to help students learn to read and write.

That’s why I am introducing new legislation in New York that can serve as a model for the nation. This bill would keep AI out of elementary and middle school classrooms, except in rare cases, and put the focus back on real learning through books, teachers and proven instruction.

This threat comes at a time when most American students are already struggling with the basics. Earlier this month, the National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that 12th-grade reading scores have sunk to their lowest level in than three decades. Barely a third of American high school seniors read at a proficient level.

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Layer on top of this collapse a technology that lets students outsource reading and writing entirely, and you create a perfect storm of ignorance. We risk raising a generation fluent in prompting a chatbot but incapable of critical thought. As one professor recently put it“Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate.”

This isn’t the first time untested ideas have been foisted on classrooms in the name of progress. In the 1990s, the “whole language” movement promised to revolutionize reading instruction by moving away from phonics and toward guessing words from context. The theory was novel.

The results were disastrous. Reading scores fell. An entire generation was left behind.

Today, AI is already being marketed by some as a new cure for literacy. The group  has launched a program calledRethinking Reading: AI for Literacy Achievementpromising that “AI can help expand access, personalize instruction, and support educators in new ways.” But we already know what works: systematic phonics, structured literacy and direct instruction on vocabulary, reading comprehension and expository writing skills. Once again, we risk unproven ideas being rushed into classrooms, dooming another generation to an even worse fate.

Writing and reading are not separate tasks from thinking; they are thinking. To struggle with words on a page is to clarify, deepen, and expand your mind.

Literacy is the serum that gives us the superpower of deep, symbolic thought. But if students let AI do the writing and reading for them, they skip the most important lesson: critical thinking.

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In this new paradigm, the focus becomes what students produce, when the goal should be giving students the tools to learn how to learn for the rest of their lives. Giving new or struggling readers AI as a tool before they are proficient will permanently relegate them to understanding the world through the prism of a large language model. Their screens may be full of words, but their minds will be empty of thought.

For adults, the calculation is different. If you already know how to read and write, AI may help you synthesize ideas or accelerate output. Teachers can use these tools for planning and scheduling.

But for children, the goal is not speed or efficiency. The goal is learning how to learn. That requires time under tension — sitting with ideas, wrestling with words, developing the patience and stamina that deep thinking demands.

I know it may sound backwards, but for this reason classrooms don’t need AI technology. They need less. They need books, foundational literacy instruction and teachers who challenge students to think for themselves.

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The legislation I’ve drafted will accomplish this by directing the New York State Education Department to prohibit the use of artificial intelligence in K-8 classrooms, except for diagnostic purposes or explicit instruction interventions. This will still allow AI to play a controlled role in diagnostics, helping educators spot weaknesses and target interventions. But the heart of school must remain human: reading, writing and thinking without a machine.

AI may unlock scientific discovery for the world’s greatest minds. But if children never learn to read, write and think, it will stunt the potential of the world itself. The threat is not that machines will out-think us. The threat is that we will stop thinking altogether.

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That is why policymakers must resist the temptation to see AI as a shortcut for America’s literacy crisis. There are no shortcuts. If we want the next generation to lead in an AI-powered world, the first step is the oldest one: teach every child to read.

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