School is back in session, and at Somersfield Academy, the most interesting homework this term may belong to the adults, who are writing an artificial intelligence policy. Good for them. Riki Teteina, the head of school, wants students who understand the technology and who “question it and use it responsibly”, without AI replacing the learning and independent thinking a school exists to build. That sentence holds both of a school’s jobs.

Young people have to be ready for tools they will live with for the rest of their lives. They also have to become independent thinkers who do not deputise their judgment to machines, which researchers call cognitive surrender.

Thinking has to come first, because education is, at its core, preparation for participation in democratic life, and a democracy requires citizens who can weigh competing claims and make up their own minds. Evidence that AI can erode that ability keeps growing.

In January, University of Pennsylvania researchers reported that adults routinely adopted an AI’s answer without checking it, doing so even when the answer was wrong. Likewise, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study last year found that people who wrote essays with ChatGPT showed weaker brain engagement and struggled to recall what they had supposedly written.

The people in those studies were adults, and adults have years of practice to fall back on. A child has far less. A skill handed to a machine before it is learnt may never be learnt at all, which is why the safest course for young pupils is to approach AI use in the classroom cautiously.

Somersfield has yet to say where its limits will fall, but its first principle, that AI must not replace learning, is what such limits protect.

None of this makes education's second job go away. AI is becoming part of ordinary working life, and students will be expected to use it well. Employers say as much: two-thirds of the business leaders in a Microsoft and LinkedIn survey said they would not hire someone without AI skills, which matters on an island where international business is the largest contributor to GDP. In Bermuda, insurers plan to more than double their AI spending within three years.

On this point, Somersfield is also right, since the school wants students to understand these tools and use them responsibly, with guidance for everyone from school leaders to parents.

Tanisha Edwards, the director of student life, goes further, wanting students to “think critically about what they encounter and take responsibility for how they use these tools”. That trains a citizen and employee at once, and employers value it. Seven in ten companies told the World Economic Forum that analytical thinking is essential, being named more frequently than any other skill.

So Somersfield gets an A. The policy is still being drafted, and the details will matter, but the instinct is directionally correct, and other schools should be taking notes. So should the Government. On October 2, Education Minister Diallo Rabain tabled the Education Authority Act 2026 and promised a public system built to outlast ministers and elections. Government already has an AI policy for its own operations; classrooms deserve the same care.

Bermuda is small enough to move quickly. With 64,000 people and fewer than 40 public schools, Bermuda can solve the coordination problem in education more readily than larger countries like the US, which are similarly grappling with questions of AI in education. Do that well, and Bermuda can assert itself as a leader in education, the place other jurisdictions come to learn.

• Conner Huey was a Fulbright Scholar in the Netherlands where he researched education policy and democracy