we need AI literacy in schools

16 Sept 2026 · 1 min

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1:14

In this commentary, the speaker shares that their university has just provided enterprise access to the AI assistant Claude, which they find valuable for coding but costly without institutional support. They argue that first‑year college students should be required to take a foundational course on using AI responsibly in writing, research, and programming. Drawing on a personal experience from a mandatory 7th‑grade workshop on Google Drive and Grammarly, they illustrate how early, structured exposure to digital tools can shape long‑term organizational and writing habits. The speaker emphasizes that the initial introduction to any technology profoundly influences future interaction, and calls for similar introductory AI courses in middle and high schools to ensure students develop efficient, ethical, and effective tool usage.

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My university just rolled out enterprise access for Claude today, and I personally think it's great because I use Claude a lot for coding and it can get very expensive, and everyone's already using AI at school anyways. But I do think that there should be a mandatory course for first years on how to use AI properly, especially in writing, research, and coding. This reminds me of my middle school when we had a mandatory workshop on how to use Google Drive and Grammarly in 7th grade. It sounds very simple cuz we're literally just learning how to organize our class assignments into folders, and how to install Grammarly extension on your Chromebook so you can check your grammar before you submit an assignment. It actually made a huge impact on my academic life. I remember that workshop from 8 years ago better than 90% of the classes I took in middle school. To this day, I attribute a lot of my digital file organization skills to that one workshop. I don't use Grammarly as much anymore, but it carried me in high school. So my point is, your first introduction to a new technology is very, very important and will change the way you interact with it for years to come, especially in college when you're a lot more free to interact with these technologies. It's important to have a good foundation and learn how to interact with these tools properly and most efficiently. I don't know how middle and high schools are dealing with this right now, but they should absolutely also have an introductory course like that if they're allowed to use these tools.