Should primary school students be allowed to use AI?

When first- and second-grade students presented games, videos and other polished products at a creativity competition, the technology behind them was often more advanced than the children’s own skills. Teachers or parents had helped with the AI tools, while the ideas came from the children.

That experience has sharpened a question already being debated in Vietnam: should young children be prohibited from using AI, or guided in how to use it? The discussion gained attention after New York announced a one-year pause on providing direct access to generative AI for students from its 2-K programme through eighth grade. The measure will affect nearly 600,000 students from the 2026-27 school year. Students in grades nine through 12 will retain access under controls.

Education specialist Nguyen Thi Thu Huyen, who served on the competition jury, said children can encounter AI early if their own thinking comes first. Students should decide what they want to make, what story they want to tell or how they want to express an idea. Teachers or parents can then help them choose an appropriate AI tool to develop it into a product they may not yet have the technical ability to create alone.

For younger children, Huyen said, teachers must make clear that technology can help carry out an idea but should not replace the child’s thinking. Parents and teachers also need to distinguish between work children must do themselves and tasks technology may support. They should assess how a product was created, not simply how attractive the final result looks.

Vo Kim Bao, a teacher at Nguyen Du Secondary School in Ho Chi Minh City, said younger students need especially clear limits. If AI repeatedly performs tasks children should do themselves, they may become dependent on it. At secondary level, students already use AI to solve exercises, find answers, prepare presentations and design slides. Some hand over almost the entire assignment, prompting teachers to reconsider how they set work and to require activities such as idea generation, writing and creative development directly in class so they can observe the process.

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With assignments such as generating ideas, writing essays or developing creative content, I can require students to do the work directly in class.