AI & education
Two governments, opposite bets.
Both are half right, and both answering the wrong question. We build neither an AI-learning programme nor a retreat from it; we build the judgement to use AI well, and to keep the final decision a human one.
Summary
On 19 June, Norway barred generative AI from primary classrooms: children aged 6 to 13 will learn to read, write and count without it, with supervised use only from 14. Months earlier, China moved the opposite way: from September 2025, every primary and secondary pupil receives at least eight hours of AI instruction a year, from age six.
Our perspective
Norway and China are both right, and both answering a different question.
Norway is right that a nine-year-old should not hand the effort of reading, writing and reasoning to a machine before those foundations exist. China is right that this generation will spend its working life alongside AI, and that pretending otherwise helps no one.
Future World Pathways sits at neither pole. We are not an AI-learning programme, and we are not a retreat from AI. AI-collaboration runs through every programme, but what we build is the judgement to use it well: when to lean on the tool, when to override it, and how to keep the final decision a human one.
“The most important thing in school is that our children learn to read, write and do mathematics.”
Jonas Gahr Støre, Prime Minister of Norway · Reuters