what on earth are we doing?

 

you know, I'm going to run out over variations of the title of this post. 

In this week's Commissioner's update, the following appeared: 

8. DESE AI Community of Practice for Leaders and Educators: 

The DESE K-12 Artificial Intelligence Community of Practice is a yearlong learning and implementation opportunity for Massachusetts school-system leaders and educators (i.e., public, charter, career and technical education, approved special education, and collaboratives). Leader and educator tracks will be available to help participants apply Massachusetts K-12 AI guidance, strengthen AI literacy, and develop responsible policies, practices, professional learning, and classroom expectations. Participants may join individually, but schools and districts are encouraged to send multiple educators and leaders to support collaboration and local implementation. The one-hour virtual monthly meeting will be held monthly on Tuesdays beginning October 20, with educators meeting from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m administrators and leaders meeting from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. Participants are asked to complete a short self-assessment to register for the community of practice.

And then also this:

           9. DESE Resource Corner: 

AI Resource Hub: DESE offers a growing collection of resources to help educators and school leaders navigate artificial intelligence thoughtfully and responsibly. This includes two new resources developed through the 2025–2026 AI Task Force: the AI Planning and Implementation Companion, a strategic roadmap for school and district leaders, as well as the, an interactive resource that explores generative AI through the lens of pedagogy and DESE’s AI Literacy principles. The AI Resource Hub also includes: implementation guidance, 

an AI Literacy for Educators course, 

recorded webinars, 

professional learning materials, and 

curated resources. 

Access DESE’s AI Resource Hub online.

What universe is this coming in from?
Because it does not appear to be the one in which I'm living, in which MIT research has now given us the term "cognitive surrender" when it comes to how human brains respond to continued exposure to something that appears to do the work for them. As has been widely noted, though, this is the equivalent of bringing a forklift into the gym:

It is not especially pleasant. It is not supposed to be. We have chosen, quite deliberately, to subject ourselves to forty-five minutes of physical discomfort for benefits accrued down the road: better health, greater strength, a future version of ourselves that will justify the soreness tomorrow morning. Moreover, we are doing this by engaging in an activity that, in the real world, we might very well avoid because there are perfectly good machines to do it for us. A car or an e-bike can more easily get you from point A to point B. Yet no one in the class doubts that what we are doing is necessary. No one would dream of outsourcing it. It wouldn’t make sense.

What continues to be stunning to me is the exactitude with which the old fable of the Emperor's New Clothes¹ continues to bear out: if you ask WHY it is that students "have to learn this," you will get nothing other than a lot of words about how "industry demands it." That, presumably, is the same industry where, as I've already shared, the illusion that everyone is using it--for what? how? to what end?--is the repeated line. 
On the other hand, the dangers of use are myriad, to the actual harm to actual humans--in addition to the cognitive surrender above, yes, the most recent chatBots still are giving  dangerous guidance to young people, while data centers are among the few items on which everyone seems to agree (they're bad!)--to the fact that they still give bad wrong answers. 

That the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education--the entity whose direct charge comes from our original constitutional language in ensuring our students are prepared to take up and defend our rights and liberties--things that the above is instead something on which there should be "implementation opportunities" and "curated resources" is to catastrophically--and I do not think that is an exaggeration--miss the mark. This does actual harm to learning and to learners. It could not be further from the direction we should be heading. 

¹The other analogy I often hear is asbestos, which yes, will keep your building from burning down, but at what cost to people? And how much is it going to cost you to deal with the fact that someone decided to use it decades ago?