Is AI killing critical thinking in the classroom?

At Thames Christian School in London, Madeleine Champagnie is less worried about her students overusing artificial intelligence than about them failing to use it enough. Despite widespread fears that young people are outsourcing their thinking and learning, she sees a reluctance to engage with technology’s rising role as a risk to their long-term success.

“Students are not all rushing to cheat with AI,” says Champagnie, the school’s innovation lead and head of English. “That’s been a big misunderstanding. Loads of them don’t want to use it. They are not always trying to get around the system. They are as scared of cognitive offloading as us,” she says, referring to the idea that delegating thinking and research to technology hinders learning. “I’ve had to persuade some extremely bright students to try it,” she adds.

However, there is increasing evidence that not all educators are facing problems with that reticence. A number of research studies demonstrate what many teachers now fear: that students are increasingly relying on AI in their learning and, in the process, using it as a substitute for developing their own critical thinking skills and independent judgment.

There are some controls on such excessive cognitive offloading in schools, notably the continued discipline of written “high-stakes” timed and invigilated exams without access to digital devices to test independent understanding.

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But some research has already shown that while AI use can boost short-term speed and results, its subsequent removal can leave students performing less well than those who never had it in the first place.

Several educators are now experimenting with the idea that, when used with suitable safeguards, integrating the technology is not only necessary as the workplace adopts AI more broadly, but also offers the potential to boost learning.

Steve Marshall-Taylor, headmaster of Brighton College, which provides pupils with access to a variety of AI tools, says he is…