Since the introduction of AI tools in the classroom, students have reported concerns with assignments declining in quality and weakening student-teacher connection, with most fearing the long-term effects it will have on education.
“This trend will overall be negative to students down the line, as AI doesn’t have the connection that the teacher does with the students,” sophomore Ieuan Mouncher said. “It is more prone to error when grading and creating assignments.”
In a poll recently conducted by The Uproar, 78% of students reported teacher AI use for lessons, with only around 22% saying they have not experienced it in the classroom. Many students who’ve seen AI use in the classroom described the trend as harmful for individuality and creative expression.
“With teachers using AI, students believe it will be okay for them to use it as well, causing students to rely on AI for assignments that don’t necessarily need it,” sophomore Emily Matthew said. “This can lower students’ creativity or critical thinking skills.”
While some students said they fear teacher reliance on AI, they also recognize it can have some positive effects if used properly.
“If they only rely on AI to plan and grade, then I think it is something to be concerned about,” one student who responded to the questionnaire said. “Now if it is used in a productive manner, like having AI [to check for] AI [use] in assignments [and] essays, then I understand the use of it.”
Teacher’s AI incorporation into lesson planning has led some students to believe it devalues the work they put in.
“I also feel like a teacher being unable to plan their lessons or grade without AI diminishes a student’s effort they put into an assignment,” Mouncher said. “Students don’t deserve a generated response from a machine that doesn’t know them and their strengths personally.”
Some students said they are concerned over the long-term environmental consequences of AI use and fear how its water intake will affect communities.
“The cooling systems used for AI servers are terrible for the environment,” Mouncher said. “The widespread use of AI over these past few years really concerns me. Data centers devour an entire neighborhood’s worth of water, leaving residents starved of running water in their working-class homes.”
No teachers who were contacted about the prevalence of AI in the classroom provided comment for this article.
Ieuan Mouncher • Feb 18, 2026 at 1:10 pm
I’d also like to point out the extremely disappointing quality of the AI assignments I’ve been getting in class. Because machine learning hasn’t quite perfected writing words on images, assignments in class have had several misspellings of words, and this is more apparent the smaller the text is. AI in classrooms is inevitable at this point, so we should stress making teachers proofread the AI assignments they hand to students to avoid the potential unintelligibility that (usually smaller font sizes of) AI generated text creates. If AI continues to be used in classrooms, which is, from the start, extremely embarrassing and telling for those allowing it to happen, I expect the busy work being handed to me to be clear of mistakes from AI. And let’s not forget that AI assignments are entirely stolen content because of how AI is trained on images off the internet. Although there’s realistically nothing I can do about this very prevalent issue as a sophomore in high school, I heavily oppose using AI in classrooms and hope for any teachers who potentially read this to consider what I’ve said. Sorry for basically writing an essay in your comment section, Cooper my goat.