Trump’s Latest Draft Executive Order Seeks to Integrate AI Into K-12 Education
Schools across the United States often cannot afford basics like pencils or stationary paper, and the new education secretary has sought to fulfill President Trump’s promise of getting the federal government out of education (except to pull funding from universities over exercising free speech rights).
AI is a different story, however: A new draft executive order would prioritize the technology in classrooms by diverting federals towards cultivating “AI literacy” skills amongst students and teachers.
Titled “Advancing artificial intelligence education for American youth,” the order states that AI is “driving innovation across industries, enhancing productivity, and reshaping the way we live and work.”
It goes on to say, “To ensure the United States remains a global leader in this technological revolution, we must provide our Nation’s youth with opportunities to cultivate the skills and understanding necessary to use and create the next generation of AI technology.”
In drafting the new order, the Trump administration may be directly responding to China, whose education ministry announced in recent weeks its own plans to overhaul classrooms by integrating AI applications into textbooks and teaching curriculum. The two countries are competing fiercely to maintain a lead in the artificial intelligence space in hopes that doing so will protect their global influence. China has been trying to unseat the United States as the leading global hegemon.
The new executive order would establish a White House task force on AI education, including members from the technology sector like Michael Kratsios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Trump’s advisor on crypto and AI, David Sacks.
Here is more from the Washington Post about the U.S. executive order, which is still a draft and could change, or never be issued:
The draft order would instruct federal agencies to seek public-private partnerships with industry, academia and nonprofit groups in efforts to teach students “foundational AI literacy and critical thinking skills.”
The task force should look for existing federal funding such as grants that could be used for AI programs, and agencies should prioritize spending on AI education, according to the draft order.
It would also instruct the education secretary, Linda McMahon, to prioritize federal grant funding for training teachers on how to use AI, including for administrative tasks and teacher training and evaluation. All educators should undergo professional development to integrate AI into all subject areas, the draft order says.
It is kind of ironic that ‘AI’ and ‘critical thinking’ would be found in the same sentence, as they are conflicting and contradictory concepts.
A study by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University released earlier in the year found that “those who most trusted the accuracy of AI assistants thought less critically about those tools’ conclusions.” It is not surprising that, in the developer community, experts have warned that new programmers do not know how to code but are rather simply accepting answers that coding bots give them, potentially losing out on fundamental knowledge necessary to debug problems or formulate better solutions. On platforms like X, users have taken to relying on chatbots to provide counterarguments in debates without reviewing the factual accuracy of what they are sharing.
There is not necessarily an issue if research and steps are taken to make the tools a true benefit to students—AI can help search through large reams of data quickly, for instance, or translate old works into English. And some companies have tried to create AI tutors that create personalized learning tracks for each student. But it is reasonable to be skeptical that notoriously tech-illiterate schools will implement AI correctly when most people still do not understand how AI models truly work, or become tricked by the idea that they are “thinking” because of their anthropomorphic design. Teachers struggle enough with just keeping pupils’ attention, with many schools seeking to ban access to smartphones during the day to get a lid on the issue.
Nothing is more emblematic of the disconnect than Education Secretary McMahon recently finding herself the subject of ridicule after she confused the term artificial intelligence with “A1,” the steak sauce. Good luck implementing ChatGPT o4-mini!
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