Natasha Singer's book 'Coding Kids' traces how Code.org and its founder Hadi Partovi convinced schools that coding was essential to economic survival, paving the way for tech companies to influence curricula. In an interview with The 74, Singer argues today's AI push by Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google into classrooms mirrors that earlier coding campaign, despite growing public distrust of Big Tech.
news.slashdot.org
· 2026-09-18
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled a one-year moratorium starting in the 2026-2027 school year that blocks roughly 600,000 students from pre-K through eighth grade from using AI in class, and bars teachers from using AI to grade their work. Companion and mental-support chatbots will be prohibited at all grade levels, individual screens are banned until third grade, and screen time guidance caps middle schoolers at 45 minutes daily. High schoolers will get limited AI access, twice-yearly AI literacy lessons, and a small pilot program testing vetted AI tools in a handful of classrooms.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-02