This school year I banished all electronics from my classroom. The Boston Public Schools banned cell phones; I took matters a step further and banned computers and tablets. I wish I had done it sooner.

For years I got around the students’ constant desire to look at their screens by providing cell phone charging stations. I kept those stations at the front of the room. Students gladly yielded their devices in order to get a full charge. But the students still had laptop devices or tablets.

During the pandemic the BPS quickly dispensed thousands of laptops to students, who were then able to do their work remotely. Teachers were able to assign work. It truly was the best of a bad situation.

We are now four years removed from the dire need of digital platforms. I suggest it is time to return to the pre-pandemic ways and use more books, more paper, and more tangible resources. Even pre-pandemic, some studies were already stating that our students were staring at screens too much.

In 2016, Common Sense Media published a report called “Technology Addiction.” In the report was this line: (a 2013) “study of 263 middle school, high school, and university students found that students studied for fewer than six minutes before switching to another technological distraction, such as texting or social media.”

Even when schools in the BPS system prohibit cell phone use, they often still allow for some form of laptop computers. Students can easily open other tabs to play games and/or to text or email one another. While there are ways to monitor and block student usage of unauthorized sites, it is time-consuming and a perpetual game of defense.

This year I went on the offense and returned to my old school roots. We use paper, pencils, and textbooks. With no computers in the classroom, I can actually see my students. The opened laptops did present a physical and psychological barrier between me and my students, and between the students themselves.

Being digital free is not a panacea, but it does allow for more engagement and discussion. Instead of turning to the internet for an answer, students are encouraged to ask their elbow-partners, as I call their neighbors, for assistance. I smile to myself whenever I hear a student ask a classmate “How’d you figure that out?” Computers can’t replicate that type of validation.

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s recent comments at the Arizona State University and Global Silicon Valley summit caused me great concern because she seems to celebrate the use of artificial intelligence in even the lowest grades. My opinion as both a parent and an educator is that children, especially the youngest ones, need to play with physical objects and need to develop social skills. More screen time is not the answer.

Critical thinking skills are built by asking questions, by trying something new, and by observing those around us. Asking a computer for an answer limits creative thought. It’s one thing to use a calculator as an adult to do quick calculations, it’s another thing to give a calculator to children who haven’t learned the concepts of addition and subtraction. AI only exacerbates this dynamic.

AI is the Siren song of education. Circe warned Odysseus not to listen to the call of the Sirens. Odysseus, being the Alpha Male of the ancient world, wanted to hear what was most forbidden. So he instructed his men to put beeswax in their ears and to bind him tightly to the ship’s mast. As the ship sailed past the Island of Sirens, Odysseus heard their songs and nearly went insane with the impulse to drive his ship onto the deadly rocks along the shore.

Once they had sailed past the danger, Odysseus’ men removed their earplugs and freed their captain. Odysseus now had a great story with no harm done. Unfortunately educational experiments – like AI – on students may produce some undesired side effects.

Secretary McMahon’s claim that “there’s a school system that’s going to start making sure that first graders or even pre-Ks have (artificial intelligence) teaching every year” isn’t just the Sirens’ song, it’s the rocky shoals themselves.

Teaching is instructive, intuitive, and repetitive. We can call the newest technology “intelligence” all we want, but its epithet is still “artificial.”

For real learning, we need real teachers – and lots of them.  The idea of closing down the Department of Education and replacing the skilled work of teachers with AI is all sizzle and no steak.

Michael Maguire teaches Latin and Ancient Greek at Boston Latin Academy, and is a candidate for the presidency of the Boston Teachers Union. The ideas expressed here are his own.