More than 139,000 students ages 10 to 13 from all backgrounds and 3,100 educators from 126 cities in 39 countries have connected via e-classrooms over the past decade. 

I am one of them.

Participating in a global digital exchange program helped foster a deep curiosity about the world and made me realize that it is a bigger, more connected place. It inspired me to serve on the University of Hawai驶i Board of Regents and to seek out programs and opportunities like the , which centers intergenerational collaboration to move toward a sustainable future. I have kept chasing that same feeling of being genuinely changed by someone else’s reality.

As a student at the University of Hawai驶i at M膩noa, I think often about what education is actually for and what it represents. Right now, everywhere I turn, the conversation seems singularly focused on one question: 鈥淲hat do we do about artificial intelligence?鈥� The debates around artificial intelligence in education usually center on whether students are using AI to cheat or as a learning resource. Questions like: Can students use AI on assignments? Will AI replace teachers? How do we design curriculum for a post-ChatGPT world? 

These are real concerns, but in our urgency to respond, we’re neglecting something equally important that AI can’t replicate: human connection. 

Being able to talk with a student across the ocean whose daily life looked nothing like mine, or hearing another student鈥檚 perspectives on climate and the future, created a human connection that AI could never replicate. That connection required me to listen, to challenge my beliefs and to update my thinking in real time 鈥� not because I鈥檓 asking a chatbot, but because a real person is trusting me with their experience. 

I was reminded how valuable this last April when I flew to Madrid to meet Global Scholars alumni from around the world. Seeing everyone in person was a completely different experience from interacting online. Shaking hands, sharing meals and being vulnerable with one another face-to-face strengthened the cross-cultural bonds we started building online. 

AI can expose you to diverse viewpoints. It can summarize them, translate them and even argue them. However, it cannot make you feel empathy for someone else’s world or help you grasp its weight. It cannot hold you accountable to another person across a cultural divide. It cannot recreate a substantive discussion about solutions to urgent global problems.

I remember my first live conference call 12 time zones away, with middle school students in Barcelona. I told them about drought concerns on Kawaihae, where it used to be green. And they told me about water restrictions in Catalonia, a place I’d never heard of. 鈥滵o you really live near volcanoes?鈥� someone asked me. I almost laughed, until I realized how little we actually knew about each other’s worlds. A kid from a small town on Hawai驶i Island had just as much to contribute to the conversation as a student in one of Europe’s great cities. 

In Hawai驶i, human connection is embedded in our culture, in the concept of aloha, in the practice of showing up for your community. We understand that relationships are not just a part of learning; they are the learning itself. Developing cross-cultural empathy comes from building strong relationships and having meaningful conversations that challenge your own beliefs.

I sometimes think about that classmate in Barcelona and whether she remembers the eighth-grader from Hawai驶i who thought volcanoes were just part of the backyard. I hope more kids get the opportunity to be surprised by each other in ways no algorithm or AI chatbot can replicate. We should be building more of those connections. Not less.

A blank document had become intimidating, not because she had nothing to say, but because she forgot how to say it alone. 

That scene from one of our classes underscores the unique challenge our generation faces as the first to grow up with artificial intelligence being a part of everyday life. High school students across the country share the struggle of navigating education with this new technology. 

According to a , the vast majority of teens who use AI for schoolwork do so without clear guidelines from their teachers, turning generative tools into an easy shortcut rather than an educational aid simply because no one ever taught us how to use them properly. 

This isn鈥檛 the first time a young generation has grappled with new technology in everyday life. During the rise of the internet in the late 1990s, the original digital divide was a battle of infrastructure and wealth. It split our parents鈥� generation into those who had computers and dial-up at home, and those who were left completely offline. 

Decades later, proved that this original physical gap directly fueled a deeply polarized labor market. This divide compounded existing socioeconomic inequalities, leaving those who lacked technology access with restricted career and wage prospects. The difference between the rise of the internet and AI is that the AI divide is defined by agency 鈥� who is taught to command systems and who is left to navigate them in the dark 鈥� not access.

Some school districts have acknowledged this and have taught students how to use AI tools by practicing prompt engineering, learning to verify AI-generated facts and enhancing the skills that the workforce will demand. For instance, partnered with higher education and industry leaders to launch a district-wide AI literacy initiative. The district integrated specific frameworks into high schools to ensure students graduate with the critical thinking and ethical skills necessary to navigate an AI-driven economy.

However, in other schools, students are banned from using AI entirely and are not taught how to spot bias, talk to AI, or to use it ethically. For instance, has adopted strict frameworks that restrict major AI platforms, except Microsoft Copilot and Canva AI, across school networks 鈥� treating any unapproved use as an academic integrity violation. 

Simply warning students against using AI without teaching them how the technology works or how to question its outputs doesn’t stop them from using it. It only leaves them to use it passively, without developing critical thinking skills to optimize it. 

According to the Lumina Foundation, over half of high school students regularly use AI tools for schoolwork, even though . When policy ignores this reality, schools fail to eliminate AI use 鈥� they only succeed in eliminating AI literacy.

In addition to students, many teachers and administrators are also being left behind simply from the lack of guidance and necessary digital infrastructure. In fact, as of 2026, lack the time to develop an AI training curriculum, and 75% lack the knowledge to do so. Without a standard curriculum that simultaneously educates our teachers and students, schools risk creating a future workforce where those unfamiliar with AI tools are systematically left behind. 

Although AI currently poses challenges in schools, it can transform learning if integrated deliberately. As students from Virginia and Wisconsin, we call on state legislators and school boards to pass legislation mandating AI literacy standards tied to industry benchmarks as a graduation requirement. 

To enforce this, state boards of education must tie direct funding to AI-resilient curriculum compliance, while also allocating funds for teacher professional development so educators across all subjects 鈥� not just technology fields 鈥� are trained to teach ethical AI usage.

Educational communities do not need to start from scratch: Successful models already exist. recently implemented an initiative that involves its members working with high school teachers to develop a curriculum 鈥� based on Google鈥檚 AI Essentials online course 鈥� designed to teach high schoolers how to safely use AI.  

If we as a society don’t teach all students how to interact with AI, young people will not only be given a weaker education, they will be locked  out of the new AI-integrated economic ecosystem. Legislators, school boards and educators have a responsibility to ensure that young generations are able to use AI. 

Leo鈥檚 wariness of Latin is understandable. When the “Habemus Papam” declaring him Pope was delivered in Latin, it encountered , reigniting debate about whether Latin is still useful in the modern era.

Rumors of Latin鈥檚 demise are greatly exaggerated, but school districts are planning its funeral. That needs to stop; the first step in planning for Latin鈥檚 continued life is to resist the elitist label that studying the language imparts. Latin is an equity tool, and we don鈥檛 acknowledge that enough. 

Latin programs across the country are being euthanized. In Needham, Massachusetts, a more than $2 million budget shortfall combined with declining enrollment led the public school district to eliminate its entire high school Latin program. Only 62 students were enrolled across four classes, compared to 945 in Spanish. Latin 1 had already been removed the prior year.

Over in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the district decided to Latin out of the middle school entirely 鈥� removing it grade by grade over three years 鈥� while technically keeping it at the high school for now. The high school Latin teacher warned it would be unsustainable: Without a middle school feeder, most students simply wouldn’t switch languages.

A t across Denver Public Schools put Latin at risk at Riverside High School, where the teacher noted that the lack of Latin in middle schools was already contributing to low high school enrollment. 

Cutting Latin off in middle school is the death knell for the language. Middle school Latin gets cut first due to low enrollment, which then makes high school Latin unsustainable, creating a self-reinforcing decline; about 80% of students who took Latin in middle school had been continuing it in high school.

That鈥檚 why the language is on life support. Only about 1,513 public high schools teach Latin, out of roughly 24,000 high schools total 鈥�  about of schools. That’s just public schools; private and Catholic schools push the number higher, but a comprehensive combined figure isn’t tracked precisely. Estimates put total K鈥�12 Latin enrollment at around 210,000 students, which is about of all students studying a foreign language.

This decline is not new: High school Latin students dropped from around 700,000 in , largely due to the post-Sputnik push toward math and science. More recently, Advanced Placement Latin exam takers fell from 6,083 in 2019 to 4,336 in 2025,suggesting continued erosion at the advanced level.

That鈥檚 bad for English speakers, as Latin forms the root of nearly two thirds of English vocabulary, especially the advanced words used in science, law and literature. For school-related vocabulary, the figure is 90%. Studying Latin can strengthen reading comprehension, which is why some schools still offer the course. 

It鈥檚 time to address the real reason why Latin studies have been declining without many scholars becoming too concerned: the elitism debate. 

Classics always had an elite image 鈥� classical knowledge was historically the hallmark of gentility 鈥� and parochial and private schools maintained classical standards longer than most public ones.This difference in offerings is most stark in the U.K.: only of private schools.

In the U.S., Latin is especially concentrated in certain types of schools: elite independent prep schools 鈥� such as Exeter, Andover and Groton 鈥� and Catholic secondary schools where it’s often required. 

But a third type of school is breaking that loop: charter schools. They demonstrate how to keep Latin alive. Classical Charter Schools in the South Bronx offer a tuition-free education in one of the most underserved congressional districts in the U.S., with Latin as a core part of the curriculum. Latin instruction starts in , framed not as prestige-building but as a practical tool: improving English grammar, spelling, vocabulary and readiness to learn other languages.The idea is to flip the script: give low-income kids the same linguistic tools that elite schools have always hoarded.

Latin critics have pointed out that no one speaks the language but that鈥檚 not exactly true.  Linguists like Tim Pulju argue that Latin never truly stopped being spoken 鈥� it continued in Italy, Gaul, Spain and elsewhere, g into the Romance languages over centuries.There鈥檚 an important distinction:  Classical Latin of Cicero and Virgil became fixed and may have died conversationally but Vulgar Latin 鈥� what ordinary Romans actually spoke 鈥� kept evolving into what we now call Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian. 

For Latino students especially, Latin can be framed as the root of their own language, not a foreign elite artifact but something ancestral and relevant. 

Latin is very much alive but it鈥檚 limping. Presenting it as an equity tool rather than a classical tradition can change who sees themselves as a potential Latin student and can change curricula 鈥� and lives.