With the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI), many teachers have introduced policies on AI usage to their syllabi and discussed its use more with their students.
While Berkeley High School does have a schoolwide academic honesty policy, it has no official policy on AI, meaning students aren’t always told the same things about it. BHS needs to have a stricter and clearer policy against AI use in order to help students build the skills school is meant to be teaching them.
The lack of consistency in messaging around AI could become a problem for students. While teachers generally agree that AI should not be used for any actual schoolwork, and some argue that AI should not be used at all in an academic setting, while others defend the use of AI as a tool for things like studying or making visuals for assignments where the visuals are secondary to the actual content.
However, Peter Seibel, a computer science teacher at BHS, pointed out that this can be a “slippery slope.” What starts as simply using a chatbot to quiz oneself can easily snowball into relying on AI for small assignments, then bigger ones, and so on. Teachers who tell their students that AI is a tool, should teach how and when to use it.
But, this is often not specified to students, who are left to decide for themselves what that means, making it much too easy for students to excuse their AI use.
The idea of AI being useful in a school setting relies heavily on a fundamental misunderstanding of school’s purpose. Many students behave as though the point of assignments is completion, but as Seibel pointed out, the real value of an assignment comes from “the thinking that (goes) into doing it.”
This goes beyond just things directly assigned by the teacher; part of school’s job is to help students build skills like study habits and reading comprehension. Assignments involving long readings or thorough research require students to find credible sources, find key ideas, and summarize what they read, among a multitude of other valuable skills.
It may be tempting to say that in the “real world” one wouldn’t need those skills and could have an AI do it for them anyway, but relying on AI at any age is detrimental to critical thinking skills — a 2025 study by the Association for Computing Machinery found that participants who had more confidence in AI’s capabilities were less likely to think critically when using it — and, students need to understand how to do things themselves first. Students who allow AI to become their only method of study or understanding, risk having no way of recognizing when it gets things wrong.
More generally, the variations in teachers’ policies make it harder to discourage AI use. “If we all had consistent expectations of policies around AI, that would be better for students and then better for teachers,” Melissa Jimenez, an English teacher and teacher lead for BIHS, said.
The need for regulation around technology in the classroom isn’t new; many teachers have increasingly required students to keep their phones away in pouches or caddies for the entirety of the period.
The clearer and more consistent these policies become, the easier they are to enforce, especially when they’re being enforced across multiple classes.
This same principle can be applied to AI policies — more consistency means easier enforcement, and allows for both students and teachers to focus on education. BHS should establish a schoolwide policy that clearly defines what is and is not acceptable, setting clear expectations for AI usage. Students should never have to guess where the line is when the goal is to help them learn.