AI Education
Beyond the AI Panic: Why Educational Systems Need Action, Not Just Ethics
At the front, a teacher explains lessons, manages the class, and assesses students. In the back, a student discreetly glances at their phone, not to text a friend, but to ask a question to something smarter, faster, and far less human. This scene is no longer new in today's world with the emergence of Generative AI. Across all classrooms, the dynamics of teaching are shifting. As every student has a genius partner right in their pockets, with one click, any question can be answered. What is extremely surprising lies in the iIronically, it is the that students – who are often portrayed as needing guidance –, who have quickly adapted this technology to their everyday use, while educational systems, which are expected to guide, are only slowly catching up.
The emergence of Generative AI (GenAI) stirred much controversy about ethics in secondary education, where these preparatory years are vital for students’ growth, yet the technology often takes over the tasks that were meant to foster that growth. Educators around the world are concerned about the dominance such tools are set to make, resulting in rules?/provisions? about what is right and wrong for students to do with this tool. Yet such ethical conversations so far poorly translate into clear recommendations for what teachers can or should do with a tool that is already shaping their students' learning habits. When educational systems fail to integrate AI effectively, they risk preparing students for yesterday's world rather than tomorrow's. Consequently, the current focus on ethical discussions, while important, it often serves as a smokescreen for institutional resistance to change. In countries like Morocco, this disconnect between reality and lived experience can lead to many challenging consequences. Therefore, what follows is an exploration of why this hesitation exists, how focusing on ethical concerns may cause one to lose sight of what truly matters, and what will happen when a teacher decides to step forward anyway to adapt.
Technology integration in education always needed proper guidelines, as it was necessary and productive for the process. As highlighted by Jhurree (2005), acquiring hardware and connectivity alone does not guarantee successful technology integration. Therefore, there are several systemic factors such as teachers’ training, infrastructure development, and adequate funding. For instance, when laptops were first introduced in classrooms, schools that lacked proper training or infrastructure struggled to integrate them effectively, which is a challenge now resurfacing with Generative AI. Examples include the need for policies on the protection of intellectual property rights, ensuring proper accreditation in e-learning, and preventing monopolies in educational technology provision. In that sense, technology within education has always entailed conversations about ethicality. However, with AI tools, the conversations about ethicality consumed the time that could be directed toward developing practical strategies to address its growing dominance in education. In this context, extensive discourse has been devoted to the enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) in education. In this sense, educators have been cautioned against embracing overly optimistic claims regarding AI. Instead, educators, researchers, and policymakers were advised to approach AI with skepticism and critical awareness (Selwyn, 2022); in Morocco, for instance, a recent study of 237 public school teachers in the Fez-Meknes region revealed that while many hold positive attitudes toward AI, more than half reported limited knowledge of AI concepts and tools, highlighting a cautious and uneven adoption process (Fakhar et al., 2024).
Yet nowadays, AI tools have become embedded in students’ lives. In a typical Moroccan classroom, you find every student with an AI companion. According to Hespress (2024), a recent survey in Morocco shows that ChatGPT is overwhelmingly popular among students, with 85% reporting they use it for tasks like translating, drafting essays, requesting text improvements, or gathering information, suggesting widespread informal adoption. GenAI have become accessible and a faster adoption to harness its potential while addressing ethical and pedagogical challenges is urgently needed. This hesitation is not only due to the lack of clarity these tools bring to the table, but also reflects what path dependency theory describes as the tendency of institutions to resist change once routines and traditions are well established. Such inertia explains why educational systems struggle to keep pace with technological innovation. Since, without a firm action plan, they risk falling behind in a rapidly evolving digital world. Educators have long relied on traditional teaching methods and assignment formats, but the rise of AI has disrupted this dynamic. Tasks that once required significant time and effort now seem almost effortless for students, who can instantly turn to AI tools for answers. This shift challenges conventional approaches to education, forcing teachers to rethink their strategies in an era where AI makes learning and cheating easier than ever. At the same time, it opens possibilities for integrating AI into teaching methods, some countries are already pioneering in this field, such as Germany with its national ‘KI-Campus’ AI learning platform.
This hesitation reveals a surprising discrepancy in the timeline. As we witness AI technologies evolving daily, educational policy evolves at a much slower pace. As an example, ChatGPT was first released in 2022, yet many teachers continue to assign written work without any significant change to adapt to the possibility that students might use AI to do all the work. Recent evidence shows this is already happening, with 85% of Moroccan students reporting they use ChatGPT to get their work done (Hespress, 2024). The gap between technological capabilities and institutional adaptation does not necessarily mean that teachers ignore the fact that AI tools are being used by their students. In an interview with Hespress on the integration of AI in Moroccan primary schools, Mohamed Fenani, a Moroccan primary school teacher, said that "The use of artificial intelligence among students has become increasingly common. From my conversations with them, I’ve found that about one-third regularly use AI tools, which is a clear sign of a new reality in which technology is deeply embedded in the learning process." He also cautioned, "AI is not just a means to complete assignments; it’s a tool for exploring new ideas and broadening students’ horizons. It should enhance classroom learning, not replace it." Many other teachers think the same about AI tools, yet the institutional responses remains slow. By institutional response, we refer to concrete actions such as official guidelines, curriculum reforms, and teacher training programs, which leave the teachers dealing individually with students routinely using AI in different aspects of the learning process. Their responses generally range from acknowledging AI use and attempting to restrict it to ignoring its presence altogether and maintaining traditional methods. A recent study on Moroccan schools confirms this variability, noting that some teachers cautiously integrate AI while others resist or overlook it, leading to fragmented practices shaped more by individual comfort than systematic training (Lehfid et al., 2025). At the same time, there is great potential for a bottom-up approach, where teachers themselves actively integrate AI tools into their teaching methods. Such initiatives could accelerate the adaptation of the education sector and better prepare students with the skills needed for today’s job market. This becomes visible when comparing countries with advanced digital infrastructure, such as Germany, and in contexts where access is expanding but not yet universal, such as Morocco.
Moroccan students fundamentally resort to AI tools outside of conventional classroom settings because AI integration is still excluded from the main educational curricula in both secondary and higher education (Telquel, 2025).
According to a recent report by the Afrobarometer Dispatch and Global for Survey and Consulting, there is an alarming mismatch between educational attainment and job market opportunities in Morocco. Despite the substantial progress in higher education, with 56% of Moroccans aged 18-35 acquiring advanced post-secondary credentials, only 25% of them have full-time employment. While 15% pointed to a lack of sufficient professional training, 35% attributed the main problem to the discrepancy between their qualifications and the digital skills needed by employers (Afrobarometer. 2025). [GG1]
Between Aspiration and Reality
Moroccan secondary education has witnessed some progress in AI integration through various initiatives, the best of which is the DigiSchool 2025 program. The latter mainly aims to bridge the digital educational gap by training 1,800 teachers and involving 36,000 students across 248 schools in such technologies as AI, robotics, and augmented reality.
Under the umbrella of the “Digital Morocco 2030 Strategy”, Mohamed Saad Berrada, Minister of National Education, highlighted that the Moroccan government has decided to invest 11 billion dirhams in technological innovation and digital infrastructure between 2024 and 2026, which will help transform Morocco into a pioneering technological hub in Africa. Further, this initiative is designed to provide professional training to more than 100,000 students and create over 250,000 job opportunities annually (Telquel, 2025; Njoya, 2025).
Regarding higher education, the AI Summer School initiative, inaugurated by Al Akhawayn University in partnership with MoroccoAI, provides advanced vocational training in AI methods and ethics, which consolidates Morocco’s 2022–2026 educational modernization roadmap. From 2023 to 2025, the program trained more than 220 students across three editions (AUI AI Summer School, 2025).
Despite these initiatives to embed AI into secondary and higher education, Morocco still has to deal with a plethora of challenges, especially the unbalanced digital infrastructure across regions, with rural areas being the least to benefit from newly implemented digital programs and funding opportunities (ALECSO, 2025). Teacher readiness is another obstacle that considerably impedes AI implementation and development in the educational sphere. Thus, raising teachers' awareness of the possibilities of AI is essential, since significant advancements in education will only occur if educators are thoroughly informed about these technologies and actively incorporate them into their teaching methodologies. (ESCWA, 2024).
From German Roots to Moroccan Branches
Since 2020, the KI‑Campus national initiative in Germany has remained a national-scale success that provides an applicable model for Morocco for several reasons. It is a large-scale platform that advocates for AI literacy nationwide, including university students, teachers, professionals, researchers, and the general public. It promotes inclusive digital education by providing open-access modules, pedagogical tools, and guides that partner universities can use as an integral part of their formal academic programs. By 2024, the KI-Campus platform had approximately 60,000 registered users; 80% of these users registered with an institutional email address, which reflects its credibility to maintain long-term usage within Germany’s higher education landscape (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung [BMBF], 2021).
Building on the national success of the KI‑Campus in Germany, we would recommend to
· Pilot this adapted model across secondary and higher education in some emerging Moroccan regions, such as Draa-Tafilalet, to evaluate its contextual replicability and impact. Effective implementation in the Moroccan context requires the formation of a national, multi-stakeholder consortium, encompassing public universities, teacher training schools (ENS institutions), research centers (e.g., CNRST), ministries (Education, Digital Transition, Industry), as well as Tech companies (e.g., OCP, s);
· Build an AI Moroccan Campus that will not only bridge the gap between higher education and technological innovation, but also contribute to the cultivation of a future-ready workforce, strong enough to spearhead socioeconomic development;
· Establish a robust academic partnership between Morocco and Germany, which will foster AI integration in education by launching joint master's programs and organizing study visits and exchange programs between Moroccan and German educators. Through knowledge transfer and capacity-building programs, German institutions can provide guidance in technological applications, which would facilitate the application of proven AI practices in Moroccan higher education institutions.
Now the teacher is still explaining, and the student is still following. However, the boundaries of the classroom have stretched far beyond its walls, and knowledge is not confined to the teacher alone but flows in from every pocket and every moment of curiosity. In this world, teachers are not afraid of change, and students are aware of the responsibility that comes with having a powerful tool in their pockets.
References
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