Parents are frustrated with public education and justifiably so. Most of the school day is spent on non-academic activities that are mainly DEI-related. This has been going on for a long time. Now a private school in Oklahoma is selling what looks like an escape: classrooms with no human teachers.
AI software will deliver the entire academic curriculum. Students will spend two hours a day in front of screens while algorithms teach them. The school claims these children learn twice as fast and post sky-high SAT scores. Do not fall for it!
This Model Is Spreading Fast
The model started at Alpha School in Austin, Texas, and is spreading fast. Campuses are opening in Edmond and Tulsa, Oklahoma. A related Arizona charter school, Unbound Academy, uses the same AI system. See the reports:
* New Private School Opening in Oklahoma With All AI Teachers
* Arizona Schools Curriculum Will Be Taught by AI – No Teachers
Homeschool parents already teach more real academics in half the time of public schools because they skip the DEI filler. Most of them will reject this AI scheme. Working parents who hear “twice the learning” and “higher SAT scores” may not.
Follow the Money in Florida
The same push is coming from Florida. Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds’s wife, Erika Donalds, has said she wants 12 AI assistants in every Florida classroom. She is the founder and CEO of OptimaEd, an online education technology company that bills itself as the world’s first virtual reality school and curriculum.
* Champion for Education Freedom, Emerging Technology & Economic Opportunity
She stands to make millions by placing AI teaching tools in classrooms and routing funds from the nonprofit side to her for-profit companies, a practice she has used before with taxpayer dollars from charter schools. OptimaEd already promotes virtual field trips through VR headsets so students never have to leave the classroom. Who wouldn’t want to reduce our children’s ability even further to interact with other human beings? And won’t every child just love never leaving the building for real experiences?
They Want to Erase Human Contact
This is not better education. It is the deliberate removal of human contact. Children already spend too much time on screens. Now the plan is to erase the one adult relationship that used to define school. No real teacher to notice struggle or confusion. No human voice teaching how to think and argue using facts and common sense. Just software and “guides” that are barred from teaching content. The same people pushing AI classrooms often push more AI data centers. The pattern is clear.
This Waste Is Nothing New
The waste of academic instructional time is nothing new. Back in the 1990s when I served on the Colorado State Board of Education, parents complained that their high school pulled students out of class for a full hour to watch a troupe of all-female Chinese dancers. The leader of the troupe told the students that males are useless and that all the dancers were lesbians. That is just one example of many non-academic DEI activities that I witnessed back then. It has only gotten worse.
The Hidden Cost to Children’s Brains
The health risks are serious. Electromagnetic Radio frequency (emf’s) emissions from constant wireless devices and VR headsets hit developing brains harder than adult ones. Children’s thinner skulls and forming neural networks absorb more energy. The brain actually heats up. Studies link this exposure to memory problems, behavioral changes, oxidative stress, reduced neuron growth, and connections to childhood brain tumors and leukemia.
* Health effects of electromagnetic fields on children
* Children Are More Vulnerable to Cell Phone Radiation
This Is the Technocrats’ Long Game
Decades ago, Dustin Heuston of Utah’s World Institute of Computer Assisted Training stated the real goal:
“We’ve been absolutely staggered by realizing that the computer has the capability to act as if it were 10 of the top psychologists working with one student… Won’t it be wonderful when no one can get between that child and that curriculum?”
That is the plan. Remove every human barrier between the child and the machine. This is not a new idea. It fulfills the long-standing goal of the technocrats. Going back to Technocracy Inc. in the 1930s, the movement under Howard Scott sought a society run by technical experts and machines rather than parents, teachers, or elected officials. Their vision was total scientific management of human life, including the education of children, with computers and data systems replacing what they considered “messy” human judgment. AI teachers are simply the modern delivery system for that same project. Don’t fall for it!
August 12, 2026
~ The Author ~
Patti Johnson is a Portrait and Landscape artist and Cartoonist. She served on the Colorado State Board of Education from 1995 – 2001. A parent and married for 50 years to her loving husband, she is a God-fearing patriotic American. Send All Comments to: pj4charis@gmail.com.
Patti Johnson’s commentaries may not be reprinted or republished without permission. Submitted to and published by Kettle Moraine, Ltd. by arrangement, and with permission of the author.