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> Pupils from first through seventh grade, aged 6 to 13, should as a general rule not be using AI, while those in lower secondary school, aged 14 to 16, can
by simonw 4mo ago
> Pupils from first through seventh grade, aged 6 to 13, should as a general rule not be using AI, while those in lower secondary school, aged 14 to 16, can cautiously adopt tools under teachers' supervision, the government said.
Sounds right to me. Kids under 13 need to learn to read, write and comprehend text. Generative AI is not going to help them with those skills.
They can play with AI at home, and after 13 they can learn how to use AI productively and, ideally, in a way that enhances rather than detracts from their education.
Also from the story:
> Facing a broad decline in education test scores, the government in 2024 banned smartphones from schools and has given teachers back more powers to enforce discipline in the classroom.
A big hooray for that. Will be interesting to see what impact that has on Norway education - a quick search just now didn't turn up any detailed studies, presumably those will show up eventually.
- irishcoffee 4mo agoKids can read, write, and comprehend text at 8. I don’t even like LLMs and I’m against this mess. Imagine having regulations rolled out when we were 8 saying “you can’t use the internet!” And I was running my own websites by 10 years old. Let’s stop pretending this tech is as interesting as we wish it was. If we want to ban models in school, ban laptops/chromebooks with internet. I don’t see the difference at this point.
- cryo32 4mo agoAt eight they have limited comprehension of the world around them and limited language skills. They need a lot longer to develop those in tandem. And also you may be above average there.
- stackghost 4mo ago>At eight they have limited comprehension of the world around them and limited language skills. I have two kids and can confidently say eight year olds generally have good language skills, are capable of expressing themselves just fine, and have good comprehension of the parts of the world that they've been exposed to.
- cryo32 4mo agoSo they can conduct a nuanced debate then? Mine couldn’t until they were much older. And I have more so perhaps that’s more statistically valid?
- stackghost 4mo ago>So they can conduct a nuanced debate then? Oh, can I move the goalposts too?
- cryo32 4mo agoNope. Language is more complicated than you think it is.
- boomlinde 4mo agoThe original claim was that "at eight they have limited comprehension of the world around them and limited language skills" and that they can't conduct debate is a relevant example of that.
- cryo32 4mo agoBy sheer irony, it would also suggest that the original poster had limited language comprehension skills and wasn't capable of evaluating an eight year old.
- orwin 4mo agoCan they identify easy stylistic device, like an extended metaphor or an anaphora? Because until they do, I will consider their comprehension skills limited.
- mh- 4mo agoI guess you can consider mine limited too.
- pertymcpert 4mo agoYes, there's also a push to ban all computers in classrooms because data is showing that it's of no benefit and if anything is a negative effect on education.
- throwaway2037 4mo agoThere is also a push to ban certain childhood vaccines amoungst crazy people in the US. What is being said here, really? Example: what if Internet access was removed, but the computer remained? It would still be very useful.
- pertymcpert 4mo agoYeah but one is supported by science and the other isn't. It's nothing to do with internet access. The fact is that computers/ipads in classrooms are negative regardless of whether they're connected to the internet.
- simonw 4mo ago> Kids can read, write, and comprehend text at 8 A sizable portion of the US adult population effectively can't read, write and comprehend text. https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp for 2023: > Between 2017 and 2023, there were increases in the percentages of adults performing at the lowest proficiency level (Level 1 or below) in both literacy and numeracy: in literacy this percentage increased from 19 to 28 percent and in numeracy from 29 to 34 percent. The literacy proficiency levels section on https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp describes what Level 1 means: > Adults at level 1 are able to locate information on a text page, find a relevant link from a website, and identify relevant text among multiple options when the relevant information is explicitly cued. They can understand the meaning of short texts, as well as the organization of lists or multiple sections within a single page. 28% of US adults are just at or below that level.
- rootusrootus 4mo ago[flagged]
- Planktonne 4mo agoThe US is a context that is generally relevant to HN, and for which we have lots of data. Literacy is a worldwide problem.
- hparadiz 4mo agoThe United States has always been at the forefront of pushing higher literacy both internally and world wide. We have just had multiple crazy tech breakthroughs, a world wide pandemic, and various other uncontrolled variables like SAT tests no longer being required at some institutions. It's impossible to draw any conclusions with so many moving pieces but ultimately I'm sure we'll figure it out. A slight regression isn't the end of the world.
- Planktonne 4mo ago
- beejiu 4mo agoWhen I was 8, I could use the Internet at school but every website was whitelisted.
- zemvpferreira 4mo agoFrom what I can tell the average school at best can aspire to teach kids how to work and how to socialize. That's it. I'd personally be very happy with computers mostly going away from school too. Most actual learning and exploring will hopefully happen at home.
- bebe83939 4mo agoMany kids in Norwegian schools do not speak Norwegian or English. Kids need "computers" just to translate what other kid is saying.
- stackghost 4mo agoDo you have a source for this?
- throwaway2037 4mo agoThis is true for many children of non-English speaking immigrant parents anywhere in the developed world. Schools will use language immersion and extra help to get these kids up to speed very quickly. Computers are sometimes used for educational games and activities, but these can be done just as well without. Can I guess that you are (native/ethnic) Norwegian and upset by the recent waves of immigration to Norway? Your comment is very specific, plus you used a new throwaway account.
- varjag 4mo agoIt's very unlikely he's Norwegian because he has no clue how education works here.
- galkk 4mo agoNo, they don’t. Especially in elementary school. My living example - my kiddo didn’t speak a word in English until 4.5 years, when she went into preschool. Russian speaking home and daycare do that for you. After 9 months in American preschool, she completely switched to English language as her primary. 2 years later, and she speaks Russian with strong accent.
- xboxnolifes 4mo agoIf you think an 8 year old can comprehend text at the same level of a 13 year old (or an 18 year old for that matter), I don't know what to tell you. Reading comprehension doesn't peak at 8.
- ilovecake1984 4mo ago8 years olds shouldn’t be using the internet.
- slashdev 4mo agoThey can use it at home. Using it school is likely undermining their learning.
- assimpleaspossi 4mo agoI didn't have the internet when I was in school. Neither did my kids till they got to college. We've all gone pretty far. For myself, that's in the technology world as a software engineer.
- sumeno 4mo ago> If we want to ban models in school, ban laptops/chromebooks with internet. Now we're talkin' I'm all for it, let's teach kids the fundamentals of the world without relying on computers before we introduce them
- yard2010 4mo agoAI is not the internet, it's a stochastic parrot that lays golden eggs for its shareholders.
- aaron695 4mo ago[dead]
- Jimmc414 4mo agoNorway spent two decades digitizing classrooms and is now unwinding it. Seems a bit shortsighted and reactionary although I think they are trying to do the right thing. Plus "Generative AI" isn't one single thing. Using it to write your essay is cognitive offloading but using it as a Socratic tutor that gives immediate feedback and adapts to the student is closer to the thing education research says works. There's an equity angle as well. A school ban doesn't ban AI at home. It bans the equalizing version. Kids in educated, rich households will get AI exposure from parents. Kids without that won't get it anywhere, because the one place where the field is leveled has opted out. If AI fluency becomes a differentiator in the labor market infrastructure which is very likely a 7 year exposure gap sorted by household class is the opposite of what public education is supposed to be for. (edit: By AI fluency I mean basically knowing how to drive the tools, an intuition for what the tools can and can't do, when to use AI vs doing it yourself, plus detecting when output is wrong, knowing what to verify, etc.)
- conception 4mo agoI feel like two decades of data that it doesn’t work seems the opposite of shortsighted and reactionary.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- willsmith72 4mo agoIt's not just Norway. Here in Australia many modern style schools were leaning hard into the digitized classroom era in the 2010s. Now slowly they're realizing their mistake The problem is, a lot of the parents have bought into the digital parenting age too. They were told ipads etc were part of getting the best education for their kid. Now they're fighting hard on rolling it back (not least because they can't comprehend that it's a problem, that their child can't focus 5 minutes without a device)
- Saline9515 4mo agoEvery parent knows that the Ipad is awful for their kid's education, but it keeps them quiet, so they happily take it.
- ddp26 4mo agoYou mean chatgpt style AI won't help them with those skills? If a human parent or teacher can help with skills like reading, an AI system can too, once it's trained and designed to do so. (How good are humans at teaching reading anyway?)
- stackghost 4mo ago>How good are humans at teaching reading anyway? Writing developed thousands of years BCE. So, considering we as a species have been successfully teaching our offspring how to read for hundreds of generations, I'd say we're probably pretty decent at it.
- bcrosby95 4mo agoIt's funny how people let cultural narratives get in the way of actual analysis. I think some of it is modern convenience has made us intolerant of any imperfection then they label even minor imperfections as a catastrophe.
- wseqyrku 4mo agoThey need those skills to be able to communicate with others, not to .. research?
- basch 4mo agoand with a structured tool, what better place to practice writing, process, iteration, revision, editing. this happens constantly, every day. a current implementation of a technology isnt optimal so the entire class of anything related to that technology is treated as equally flawed. the solution here is better tools, not preventing better tools from being created.
- ilovecake1984 4mo agoSounds dystopian. What kids need to learn to read is an adult to engage with them, listen to how they read and engage them on the contents of the book.
- 4mo ago
- truncate 4mo agoTotally agree! For anyone who still thinks kids should use AI, another argument to make is we are still figuring out AI (hence the constant debate on it, hype, uncertainty, boundaries of its capabilities etc etc). I don't think anyone with right mind can disagree with that. Keeping that mind, wouldn't it make sense to at-the-very-least tread with caution when it comes to kids.
- iwontberude 4mo agoWhether they should or not is a moot point. They are using it and we need to figure out how to organise society to deal with it.
- rwmj 4mo agoWe're in like year 2 or 3 of LLMs being serious tools, still with many disadvantages over humans. There's plenty of time to figure things out, we don't need to experiment on children right now.
- Nux 4mo agoReturn to pen and paper, particularly for testing. Extend school time for doing supervised "homework" that doesn't involve the Internet. Like that?
- alchemism 4mo agoYes, make the teachers on $25-35K annual salaries do /more/ work for no extra money. I'm sure that will fix education.
- qsera 4mo agoI am conflicted on this. One part of me think that they deserve a lot more compensation. But I am not really sure if that should be in the form of a salary rise.
- 4mo ago
- lukan 4mo ago"and has given teachers back more powers to enforce discipline in the classroom. A big hooray for that." I don't suppose they are allowed to use physical violence again, still I would like to know what exactly you are cheering here for?
- JimsonYang 4mo ago> Facing a broad decline in education test scores, the government in 2024 banned smartphones from schools and has given teachers back more powers to enforce discipline in the classroom. I remember seeing an nyt article where there was mixed results on cell phone bans. While they increased socialization among students, the school didnt see better test scores. We'll have to see if a ban on AI can improve test scores-I am bullish on the idea tho
- Jakob 4mo agoI would see that as an absolute win. Socialization is the main point I send my kids to school. Socialization leads to discourse which leads to learning.
- JimsonYang 4mo agoI agree but unfortunately the US education budget is driven by test scores. Unless theres strong evidence that test scores will increase, Karen from the PTA insists that her child be given access to their phone
- scotty79 4mo agoSocialization goes out of fashion at a rapid pace. If I were to guess, technology deprived kids will quickly catch up with the trend when they age out of the ban. Also use of technology anti-correlated with alcohol and drug use so there might be unwelcome side effects.
- graemep 4mo agoBritish schools are often pretty clear that kids are not there to socialise - they will say it in so many words. It also depends what you by socialisation. in terms of school people usually mean two distinct things: have opportunities to spend time in social interactions, and learning social skills. My experience of taking kids out of school is that the first reduces (because they spend less time with other kids each day) but the second increases (because they meet a greater variety of people in a grater variety of places). That takes me to my greatest concern with AI. That kids will socialise (in both senses) with AI rather than people. What will that do to their social skills? There are plenty of examples of adults doing that (visible in places like /r/MyBoyfriendIsAI ), but at least they grew up developing some social skills. If AI is a big part of your interactions, what will the effects of that be?
- theptip 4mo ago> Generative AI is not going to help them with those skills. I think it's more complex than this. AI is both the best technology ever invented for avoiding learning, and the best technology ever invented for learning. The cat is out of the bag. If teachers are asking for take-home essay assignments in 2026 then students are going to use AI and learn nothing. "AI detectors" are nowhere near reliable enough to be fair; they have well-known false-positive weaknesses that disproportionately disadvantage ESL students. The status quo is not viable, I just don't see it as being workable to ban AI at home. (If they just mean that kids shouldn't be using ChatGPT during class I can get behind that I suppose.) On the other hand I believe that if we figure out how to teach AI to be a better tutor, we can get the equivalent of 1:1 personalized education for everyone. The potential is huge. Unfortunately this requires a complete rethink of how the curriculum is structured, and my read is that the public school systems (both teachers and government agencies) mostly don't have the resources or appetite to tackle this.
- wffurr 4mo agoThere is no universe where an LLM helps one learn to read. You need to be able to read first to use one, and worse yet, you need to be able to think critically about the outputs, not just decode and sound out the letters.
- tacomagick 4mo agoLLMs are able to talk for a very long while now. Have you ever used Gemini as an assistant? It can even put in related images about your query and while it can use an improvement it can spell more or less.
- rwmj 4mo agoIt's far from clear that this helps you to learn anything. More likely it's a way for most people to avoid having to think or learn.
- tacomagick 4mo ago
- testfrequency 4mo agoWhy is this the most upvoted comment, yet when the UK repents teens form social media it’s met with “aDulTs arE bEiNg monItoRed”. I agree with Norway here, and it’s slightly exhausting to see people attack any country that’s trying to protect kids as somehow coming for everyone’s supposed sovereignty. I care about the youth and know they are in the midst of a culture war with adults, leave them out of it until we figure out a path forward. edit: (crazy to see +11 on my comment, and also -1 when refreshing. Clearly my comment is divisive. This is honestly validating that adults simply cannot find common ground in this topic - especially HN)
- mattnewton 4mo agoBecause banning smartphones in schools doesn’t affect adults not in those schools, whereas age verification does? How you implement these protections matter.
- testfrequency 4mo agoThe rhetoric I often see online is forcing children to identify themselves which, obviously leads to adults being required to identify themselves. How do adults declare themselves as adults without teenagers claiming to be adults also? It’s all complicated, but I am exhausted from reading doom articles of how the UK wants adults to not exist online while trying to force children offline for their own existence and long term health.. It’s worth me noting that I’m extremely liberal, but I’ve admittedly been failing to see how we keep children safe online without forcing identity of adulthood. We do not allow teens to buy cigarettes or vapes based on vibes either, right? (please correct or roast me, I really am struggling with this and am tired of reading refutes that are not productive)
- mattnewton 4mo agoIn my view, it’s very simple. There are places like schools, or parents buying phone plans, to identify children. Will some children get access outside of that? Sure. But 100% enforcement isn’t possible even if you thought it was worth destroying privacy on the internet.
- dev1ycan 4mo ago13? there is no reason a minor should use a brain rotting technology like AI, in fact, AI for pretty much most teens is way WAY more damaging than even tiktok ever was.
- tacomagick 4mo agoCare to elaborate with an example?
- intended 4mo agohttps://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/ https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt... There’s another study by MSFT on a similar topic, and yesterday there was an article from Nature shared here on HN.
- somenameforme 4mo agoI'd add to it that most of the studies showing significant negative effects of LLM usage are on adults. This stuff is going to fry kids' still rapidly developing brains in a way that will make the COVID school lockdown kids look like they had it good.
- NDlurker 4mo agoI don't understand what the controversy is in the US about banning phones in schools. I graduated highschool in the mid 2000s and cell phones were just starting to gain adoption in my town in the last couple years I was in school. I don't recall anyone using a phone in class, but Game Boys were definitely not allowed. I was surprised when I found out that kids were regularly on their phones in class. Why was that ever allowed? Did it get too hard to enforce and they gave up on it until recently?
- doctorpangloss 4mo agoa large florida school district banned cell phones in schools, and after two years, the total benefit that was measured to be likely caused by this was +0.9 percentiles on their standardized achievement test. in comparison, if you study ONE HOUR for the SAT, you gain approximately 0.9 percentiles on the test. how do dozens if not low hundreds of hours of time you are not spending on your phone at school translate to only the same benefit as doing ONE hour of studying? well, if there is no mechanism, then yeah, that's what happens. so why was it ever allowed? either tests are severely limited in what they measure, or the impact of cell phones on education is actually quite small. it cannot be both.
- NDlurker 4mo agoWhy was it allowed in the first place because why was it treated any different than other distractions in the classroom?
- doctorpangloss 4mo agoi don't know if you've been in an american classroom lately but the typical experience is that they're not that strict.
- aix1 4mo ago> in comparison, if you study ONE HOUR for the SAT, you gain approximately 0.9 percentiles on the test. [citation needed]
- 4mo ago
- shusaku 4mo agoConnect the dots also banned, though there is some discussion of loosening the rules to allow interpolating up to four points.
- breppp 4mo ago> Facing a broad decline in education test scores, the government in 2024 banned smartphones from schools and has given teachers back more powers to enforce discipline in the classroom. Isn't that expected in most countries in Europe? There's an aging overall population that is shrinking and immigration is rising. So you get a progressively rising percentage of immigrants among school students, many of those coming from 3rd world countries with non-functioning education systems.
- guyomes 4mo ago> They can play with AI at home Actually, in Europe, Gemini is officially not available for kids even at home [1]. In some countries like Germany, the restriction applies until 16 [2]. I find unsettling that even for supervised account, parents are forbidden to let their kids learn how to use Gemini, even between 14 and 16 yo. Note that this restriction does not seem to appear from other AI company. So from outside, it looks like unsolicited interference from Google in the parental education choices. [1]: https://support.google.com/families/answer/16109150?hl=en#availability https://support.google.com/families/answer/16109150?hl=en#av... [2]: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1350409?sjid=7871472644837759375-EU#zippy=%2Ceurope https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1350409?sjid=7871...
- master-lincoln 4mo agolol > unsolicited interference from Google in the parental education choices. They are a company offering a product and they decided not to offer it to kids. It's not like they are telling you as a parent what you need to do. Why don't you get a similar product from a different company for your kids?
- guyomes 4mo ago> They are a company offering a product and they decided not to offer it to kids. It's not like they are telling you as a parent what you need to do. Fair enough! Indeed that would be a true issue only if the company had a monopoly.