Banning AI In Schools And Teaching AI Literacy Share One Goal

It is not hard to understand why so many parents, teachers, and school administrators are uncomfortable with the idea of artificial intelligence in the classroom. The concerns are valid. Some children have abused artificial intelligence to write their essays, copy answers they do not understand, generate fake sources that appear legitimate, or simply outsource their thinking to AI rather than develop their own thoughts.

What Elizabeth Tweedale, founder of Coco Coders, has encountered repeatedly in conversations with students, parents, educators, and community leaders is something that tends to surprise people on all sides of the debate. The fear of AI in schools and the case for implementing it are not opposing positions. At their core, they are responding to the same reality. The question that divides them is not whether AI poses risks to students, but whether awareness, education, and guardrails are a better answer than restriction alone.

The Moment A Skeptic Changed His Mind

Elizabeth recently presented to a community group on the inclusion of AI in education, and one attendee pushed back almost immediately. AI was dangerous, they argued. It could not be trusted. Children and teenagers should not be using it at all. It was a position held with conviction, and it came from a genuine place of concern. By the end of the conversation, that same person had arrived somewhere entirely different. Not because Elizabeth had argued them out of their fears, but because she had agreed with the underlying dangers and then walked through why those fears were precisely the reason early AI literacy matters so much.

The turning point was a simple statistic. One recent survey found that 64 percent of U.S. teens have used AI chatbots, and in one workshop Elizabeth led with high school students, she said the figure was 100 percent. Not most students. Every single one. AI is not something that will enter these children's lives when they are ready for it. It is already there, shaping how they search, write, create, and think, both in their education and social lives. The question is not whether students would use AI, but whether anyone is teaching them how to use it intentionally and responsibly.

The Gray Zone

That distinction is where conversations about policy become critical. Right now, most schools exist in a gray zone. Some teachers allow AI freely; others ban it entirely; many have not addressed it at all, which means students walk into six to eight different classrooms every day carrying their own privately formed assumptions about where the line is and adjusting on the fly depending on what they think each teacher expects. One student might believe it is completely acceptable to use AI to write an essay outline. Another might believe that even using AI for grammar checks is dishonest. Neither of them knows what the school actually thinks because most schools have not given them a position on where their boundaries are set.

In one of Elizabeth's high school workshops, students were asked to vote on a series of AI use scenarios, from brainstorming and grammar checks to writing first drafts and generating sources. The room was divided, sometimes sharply, on questions that might seem straightforward, such as “Is it acceptable to use AI to write an outline for your essay?” or “Is it acceptable to use AI to write the first draft of your essay if you wrote the outline yourself?” And when asked whether they knew their school's official position on AI, everyone was unsure. This is not an isolated school and student response to AI in education.

According to one 2024 report, six in ten American teens either say their school has no rules for how generative AI can be used or simply do not know if rules exist at all. Meanwhile, 83 percent of parents say their child's school has never communicated with them about generative AI in any form. Students are confused, parents are uninformed, and teachers are left to fill the gap on their own. The policy problem is not isolated to one group but operates at every level of the system at once.

The data represents the confusion accurately. Among teens who used AI for a school assignment, 46 percent did so without their teacher's permission, and an additional 12 percent were not even sure whether they had permission to do so.

What Students Actually Need

This is where companies like Coco Coders become relevant, not just as educational resources but as a potential structural solution. What students need is not simply a rule that says AI is allowed or AI is not allowed. They would benefit from a framework for judgment and a foundation in AI literacy. They should understand what AI is actually doing when it generates an answer, why it can sound authoritative even when it's wrong, how to verify information, when disclosure matters, and how to use these tools in ways that sharpen their thinking rather than replace it.

Among teens who had class discussions about AI, 55 percent checked other sources to verify AI outputs, compared with just 43 percent of those who had no classroom discussion (the other 2 percent were unsure).

Before a student can meaningfully question how AI generates an answer, understand how it was trained, or recognize where it might be wrong, they first need a foundational understanding of how computers work, how code is written, and how algorithms are formed. Coco Coders was built to teach children the coding fundamentals that support deeper AI literacy, rather than only basic familiarity with the tools.

Elizabeth's experience reinforced something Coco Coders has been built around from the beginning. By the time many students reach ninth grade, they may already have developed habits and assumptions around AI. Some see it as a learning tool. Some see it as a shortcut. Most are confused about where the ethical line is and anxious about being accused of cheating for using something their peers use freely. Getting to students earlier, in the six-to-14-year-old age window where Coco Coders operates, means helping students build foundational judgment and skills before questions around academic integrity, college applications, and workforce readiness become more immediate.

The goal is to build the foundational coding and technical literacy that gives children the capability to actually understand AI when they encounter it, not just use it, but understand what it is doing, why it works the way it does, and where human judgment still has to lead. This is what good education has always tried to do with every powerful tool that has entered the classroom before this one.

The fear is understandable. The hesitation is valid. And as it turns out, both impulses are pointing at the same problem. Banning AI and teaching AI literacy are not opposing positions, but are two responses to the same urgency. One approach focuses on giving students tools to navigate what is already in front of them, while the other reflects a more cautious response to AI’s growing presence.

Coco Coders, founded by Elizabeth Tweedale, teaches children aged six to fourteen the coding and AI literacy skills they need to navigate an increasingly technology-driven world. Visit cococoders.com.

BDG Media newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.