Washington wants artificial intelligence in America’s classrooms. Technology companies promise personalized tutors, better learning, and a generation ready to compete in an AI-driven economy. But a new national survey shows that the parents raising those children want far less of it.

A new report from the Institute for Family Studies, released Thursday, finds that 56% of parents want AI blocked in schools, while another 26% want less of it. Seventy-seven percent believe AI will harm children’s learning, and 73% worry that AI in schools will expose children to serious risks.

YouGov surveyed 2,000 American parents of school-age children for the report between July 27 and August 13, 2026.

The poll measures parents’ views, not AI’s effects on learning. Still, its findings raise a question Washington should answer: Are schools helping children master a useful technology, or encouraging dependence before children have developed the skills to work independently?

President Trump’s April 2025 executive order promotes AI literacy, teacher training, and classroom use. America has good reason to prepare students for technological competition with China. But teaching children how AI works is different from asking them to rely on it to read, write, or solve problems. Schools should establish the educational value of those uses before making them routine.

I asked Michael Toscano, one of the report’s authors, why Washington’s enthusiasm differs so sharply from parental opinion.

“Parents, in other words, have a broader view of what it means for their kids to thrive than leaders in Washington,” Toscano explained in an email exchange.

He’s right. Parents want their children to become thoughtful, responsible adults, not simply proficient users of the latest software.

Look at what parents want inside the classroom. Only 11% favor an educational model built around tablets and AI. By contrast, 38% would confine AI to computer labs and keep printed books and handwriting at the center of instruction. Another 25% favor returning to books and handwriting.

Schools can teach children about AI without making it the basis of their education. Students should learn what these systems do, where they fail, and how to question their answers while continuing to practice reading, writing, and mathematics for themselves.

In my August Washington Stand article, “The Friction Our Children Need in the Age of AI,” I argued that some of the difficulties technology promises to eliminate are essential to learning. A student who struggles through a difficult paragraph, reworks a mathematics problem, or rewrites a poor essay is building the habits of attention, perseverance, and independent thought.

When a chatbot supplies the answer or rewrites the essay, the finished assignment may conceal how little the student has learned.

“They can see their children using AI as a crutch and are concerned that this might lead to the atrophying of the mind,” Toscano told me.

AI can be useful, but convenience is no substitute for understanding.

I raised a similar warning in my March article, “America’s Teens Are Turning to AI for Homework. That Should Worry All of Us.” The concern extends beyond cheating. Children need the knowledge and judgment to recognize a wrong answer, challenge a misleading claim, and complete their work when AI is unavailable.

Christian families carry an added obligation.

Scripture places the responsibility for instructing children squarely upon parents. The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) calls God’s people to love Him with all their heart, soul, and might and to teach His commandments diligently to their children at home and along the way, from morning until night. That God-given responsibility cannot be surrendered to a school district, a technology vendor, or an algorithm.

My wife and I took that charge personally. We enrolled our children in Christian schools from preschool through their graduation from Liberty University. That required financial sacrifice, but we understood it as part of our responsibility before God. Today, three of our four grandchildren are school age. They are homeschooled and participate in Classical Conversations, a program that supports parents in directing their children’s education. We want them to learn to use technology wisely while developing their own understanding and judgment.

I also asked Toscano what Christian parents should do to protect their children and help other families.

“Christian parents should be bold in their protection over their own children and not forget their neighbors, who are likely to be in public school and need protections, as well.”

Public school parents deserve the same voice, and too often they lack it.

The survey shows how wide that gap is. Among respondents whose children have used classroom AI, 84% of those with children in secular private schools say they can shape its use, compared with 49% in public schools.

Parental authority should not depend upon the ability to pay private school tuition.

Support for a pause crosses party lines: 75% of Republican parents and 72% of Democratic parents favor pausing the introduction of AI into schools. School boards have an opportunity to act on concerns shared by families who disagree on much else.

School boards should pause new requirements for students to use AI until independent evaluations show educational benefits for the relevant ages and subjects and demonstrate adequate protections for privacy and well-being. Before adopting a system, schools should tell parents what it does, what student information vendors collect and retain, and whether that information is used to train AI models. Parents who decline should have an equivalent assignment available for their children.

Teachers should remain responsible for instruction and assessment. Students should regularly demonstrate what they can read, write, and solve without AI assistance. Printed books, handwriting, sustained reading, and classroom discussion should remain central to that work.

The national security stakes extend beyond producing more programmers. America needs citizens who can detect deception, weigh evidence, and make sound decisions under pressure. Those abilities develop through practice. Schools must give children that practice before asking them to depend on machines.

As Christians, we recognize that children are created in God’s image. Their education ought to cultivate wisdom, character, responsibility, and love of neighbor. A machine may help explain a difficult lesson. It cannot replace the human relationships through which children learn what it means to live wisely.

Proverbs 4:7 (ESV) puts it simply: “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.”

America must prepare its children for the age of artificial intelligence. But preparing them to use intelligent machines must never come at the expense of teaching them to think, judge, and act wisely without them.