The Future of Education

The Action Network BC—an amalgam of organizations and initiatives focused on organizing, advocacy, and community engagement in British Columbia, Canada-- recently sent out a petition for signatures of educators in support of a request that the provincial government put a “pause on generative AI in BC schools”. Of course, the proverbial ship has sailed in terms of AI and a “pause” is daunting, if not impossible. The petition demonstrates the compelling concern with “AI dependency in young people” and the deleteriousness of this dependency in terms of the mental health of youth. This action arises from a deep anxiety among educators and education policymakers with the rise of AI and with the dramatic shift in educational practices, policies, and culture. The transformations wrought by AI are not unprecedented. Such decisive and profound social transformations have been in abundant evidence throughout the entire history of communication technological innovation and advance, and especially in the emergence of digital technologies in educational contexts. Almost 20 years ago, Nicholas Carr asked the provocative question, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, an article in the Atlantic that was the foundation for his book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. (Carr, 2020)[1] Carr’s concerns with the internet were focussed less on the unprecedented availability and ubiquity of a digital avalanche and velocity of information, and more with how the very communicative form of the internet molds our understandings of self and society, and the priorities and assumptions we make about the world around us. The consequences have been profound and both cognitive and cultural in nature. Following advances in neuroscientific research, Carr offers an account of a particular neuroplasticity—how the brain changes with experience; that is, how our use of communication technologies alters our neuropathways to the extent that digital or screen addiction became an issue to be reckoned with. There is of course, a long history of concern and critical engagement around digital “addiction”, or the compulsive use of digital devices and an excessive amount of screen time. This history for many critical observers culminated in the March 2026 ruling that Meta and YouTube were negligent and that these platforms were purposefully developed and designed to be addictive, thereby causing harm to the mental health of youthful users. The jury rejected Mark Zuckerberg’s claim that Meta does not design apps to maximize screen time. This was a “rare verdict holding Silicon Valley accountable for its role in fueling a youth mental health crisis.” (Allyn, 2026)[2] Compounding the complexity to this issue is AI-dependency and the cognitive offloading it affords that results in diminishing capacities of analytical acuity, critical and independent thinking, problem-solving, and more. This paper explores the complexities and contestations, the arguments and the fears around the “robotization of education”.