Norway tells schools: no AI for kids under 13, cautious use only after 14

A ban drawn by age, not by tool

Norway's government has set a near-ban on AI in elementary school, Reuters reports. The rule, as quoted in the thread: 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.

It doesn't arrive in isolation. Facing a broad decline in test scores, Norway in 2024 banned smartphones from schools and handed teachers back more authority to enforce classroom discipline. The AI rule extends that posture. One reader noted an apparent tension: Norway also runs Sikt AI for schools, where teachers monitor how AI is used — so the country is both embracing and restricting it depending on the grade.

Willison: under-13s need to learn to read and write first

The most-upvoted take came from a well-known developer, and it tracked the policy's logic:

"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." — Simon Willison

A second voice sharpened why this case differs from past tech panics:

"You don't hand out calculators before kids understand arithmetic. LLM version is sneakier because skipping the work still produces something that looks finished." — a commenter on why the output hides the skipped learning

The calculator parallel — and the people who lived it

Not everyone bought the ban. Readers reached for history: bans on calculators, on computers, on internet search in the 1990s, all of which curdled into curricula rather than prohibitions.

"I already saw it in my life: a ban on calculators, a ban on computers. But after a short period of rejection, everybody starts to embrace the new tech." — a commenter who lived through earlier classroom-tech bans

The counterweight came from someone pointing at the field's own forums:

"Spend a few minutes on the teacher subreddits… AI has been a disaster for student outcomes and educator performance, more or less across the board. It should be banned in education, but there's no way to enforce that without increasing educator workload substantially." — a commenter citing /r/teachers and /r/professors

The system eating its own tail

The thread's most quotable diagnosis wasn't about kids at all — it was about the whole apparatus closing the loop:

"Education right now has basically become a giant AI echo chamber… teachers use AI to make assignments, students use AI to do them, teachers use AI to grade them, and principals use AI to watch over the teachers." — a commenter describing the closed loop

Another parent flagged the half the policy ignores: nothing in the rule addresses teachers using AI to generate sub-par worksheets or to mark work inaccurately. Norway drew its line at the student under 13. The harder question the thread kept circling — who polices the adults on the other side of the desk — the policy leaves open.