The Paradox of AI in ESL Instruction: Between Innovation and Oppression

This article critically examines Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) within English as a Second Language (ESL) contexts, arguing that current practices often deepen systemic inequality. Drawing on Iris Marion Young's Five Faces of Oppression, we analyze the implementation of AIED in oppressed schools, illustrating how students are tracked into the consumer track—passive users of AI technologies—while privileged students are directed into the creator track, where they learn to design and develop AI. This divide reinforces systemic inequality, depriving disadvantaged students of communicative agency and social mobility. Focusing on the Israeli context, we demonstrate how teachers and students in these schools lack the training and infrastructure to engage meaningfully with AI, resulting in its instrumental rather than transformative use. This “veil of innovation” obscures educational injustice, masking deep inequalities in access, agency, and technological fluency. We advocate for an inclusive pedagogy that integrates AI within English education as a tool for empowerment—not as a replacement for linguistic and cognitive development.