AI Companies Push Schools With a Big Tech Playbook, Journalist Warns

Singer makes the argument in a new book, Coding Kids, and in an interview on The Vergecast. She details how large tech companies took a central role in promoting computers and coding in education, promising that computer science skills would lead to high-paying jobs. By the time many of those students entered the workforce, new technologies had thrown that promise into question, according to The Verge. Meanwhile, the companies got schools to help create a new class of would-be workers and trained students on their products and software, making them likely future customers.

Singer told The Vergecast, 'I worry we have collective amnesia.' She asked whether lessons from past tech cycles in schools can inform the rollout of AI, make sure it benefits education, and put safeguards in place now rather than a decade from now. In some ways, she believes the answer is yes.

The book recounts how more than a decade ago, the largest U.S. tech companies embedded themselves in school curricula through courses for Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles. Apple and Microsoft each created their own curricula featuring tools such as Apple’s Swift and Microsoft’s Minecraft. Singer said it was striking to imagine parents accepting 'Pfizer AP Biology, or Northrop Grumman AP Physics, or ExxonMobil Environmental Science AP.' One expert told her that medical students trained by a company on how to implant its proprietary device rarely choose to try another.

Google became a dominant force in education through low-cost Chromebook laptops, Singer writes. She tracked their adoption across schools through the 2010s, which she says accelerated during COVID-19 school shutdowns. Google also introduced its Classroom app for assignments and grades. By the time generative AI took off, Google was already a key platform provider for many schools and well positioned to promote it.

Companies also backed nonprofit groups such as Code.org, according to the book. Code.org launched a viral campaign with a celebrity-laden video that included Microsoft founder Bill Gates and then-Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, urging children to learn to code. Singer writes that Code.org founder Hadi Partovi took a startup-style approach and had little planned for how to capitalize on the video’s attention once it took off. He ultimately funneled that attention into a similarly splashy 'Hour of Code' campaign, urging schools to offer hour-long courses introducing children to coding building blocks.

At the time, there was not much pushback, Singer found, though some alternatives emerged. One group of academics used a more traditional, methodological approach to testing and rolling out its own computer science curriculum. It had the express goal of diversifying the kinds of students enrolled in such courses and taught students to think about big questions around the internet and technology and to scrutinize builders’ motivations.

Backlash eventually arrived. Some recent graduates say they feel let down that they were told to code their whole lives, only to find entry-level jobs diminishing, Singer told The Verge. Some schools are getting rid of ubiquitous Google Chromebooks, and research around the world is finding that adding technology to the classroom often does not have a significant impact on actual learning.

Singer said she is not arguing against tech education or tech in schools. But most parents want more than just getting kids to learn to use tech, she said. They want kids to learn how to be informed citizens in a democracy, and they want kids to figure out what their passions are, who they are and what their beliefs are.