From Erasure to Futures: AI-Driven Curricula and the Politics of Memory in Emerging School Models

• In Event: From Memory to Machine: Rethinking Curriculum in AI-Mediated Education

Abstract

This paper examines the rise of AI-driven school models such as Alpha School and Unbound Academy as sites of epistemic and curricular transformation. While marketed as innovative and personalized, these schools risk enacting a politics of erasure by replacing communal, historical, and relational forms of learning with algorithmic optimization. Drawing on curriculum theory, affect studies, and genealogical analysis, the paper explores how these models reconfigure time, memory, and pedagogical labor. It argues that such systems prioritize efficiency over care, futurity over history, and data over deliberation. In response, the paper calls for alternatives rooted in culturally sustaining pedagogy and community-authored curriculum. It urges critical engagement with AI’s influence on what is remembered, forgotten, and imagined in education’s future.

Author

• Rick J. Voithofer, The Ohio State University