Warning that young people “are drowning in tech,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, called on schools on Wednesday to stop giving digital devices like iPads to children in prekindergarten through second grade.
In a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, Ms. Weingarten also urged elementary schools to avoid using artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Khan Academy’s Khanmigo with children. And she called for new national privacy and safety standards for A.I. tools in all schools.
The message was part of a new campaign by the second-largest U.S. teachers’ union to prioritize active, hands-on learning and human relationships in classrooms, while reducing school reliance on digital devices. Ms. Weingarten said she was galvanized by a talk she had heard by Jonathan Haidt, the author of “The Anxious Generation,” on how screens can hook children, hindering socialization and critical thinking.
“If we don’t find a way to call this out from an education perspective, I fear that we will lose a generation of kids,” Ms. Weingarten said in a phone interview. “The work of teaching and learning in the earliest grades should be done without A.I.”
The union’s effort reflects a backlash among parents and educators against heavy use of school-issued laptops and apps. Some parents and nonprofit children’s groups are also pushing back against campaigns by tech giants like Google and OpenAI to spread their A.I. products in schools.
Last month, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest U.S. public school system, said it would eliminate school devices like tablets for the youngest students, as well as introduce screen-time limits for every grade. Separately, dozens of parents and health groups called for a five-year pause on the use of generative A.I. products like Gemini and ChatGPT in schools.
In her speech on Wednesday, Ms. Weingarten laid out a plan for reorienting public schooling toward human abilities and student well-being. She called it “a devices down, eyes up, hands-on strategy.”
In an A.I. era, she said, skills like problem-solving, critical thinking and applying ethics have become more important. Yet, she noted, “rather than working through a challenge, students can turn to an A.I. chatbot for an effortless answer.”
Ms. Weingarten also criticized the Trump administration’s ties to tech companies, suggesting that the White House’s industry relationships had led to a “laissez-faire approach to addressing the harms of technology.” She called for an independent research consortium to study the impacts of A.I., screens and other technology on students.
Ms. Weingarten’s warning comes nearly a year after the union announced it was starting a National Academy for A.I. Instruction for teachers, backed by $23 million from Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic. At the time, she said industry involvement would help train teachers and give them more say in how companies shaped A.I. tools for schools.
Some union members criticized the deal, saying the partnerships undercut teacher autonomy on A.I.
This week, Ms. Weingarten said that the union was negotiating safety and privacy standards for A.I. use in schools with “our partners in the A.I. academy,” and that Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic had agreed in principle to those standards.
“We’re being transparent,” Ms. Weingarten said, adding that she preferred that the federal government and state legislatures, not unions, regulated A.I. safety. She added: “We’re willing to walk away from the funding that we receive here if we don’t get the safety and privacy.”
