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South Korea’s plan to introduce AI-powered digital textbooks to schools has prompted a backlash from parents and teachers, who are concerned about children’s overexposure to digital devices and potential misinformation.
Education Minister Lee Ju-ho said this week that AI-powered tablets were “key” to a planned overhaul of Korea’s school system. The technology is expected to be introduced into classrooms for children as young as 8 next year.
But the proposal, which the South Korean government says is the first of its kind in the world, has met with opposition from many parents, already concerned about the amount of time their children spend using smartphones and tablets.
South Korea consistently ranks among the highest-performing countries in OECD tests by the Programme for International Student Assessment. However, the government in Seoul is concerned that a traditional emphasis on rote learning is stifling innovation at a time when the country is trying to reduce its dependence on traditional manufacturing industries.
“We can all agree that we need to move from a one-way classroom based on memorization to a space where students can engage and take ownership of their learning,” Lee said. “2025 is a critical year for this change, and we need to leverage AI-powered textbooks to help teachers transform their classrooms.”
According to South Korea’s Ministry of Education, the tablets will be customizable so that “fast” and “slow” students can be assessed by the soVscekware and given different AI-generated tasks with varying levels of complexity.
But the government has provided few details about exactly how the digital textbooks (and other AI-powered teaching tools developed by Korean tech companies including LG and Samsung) will work, or how the system will be prevented from dealing with AI’s tendency to “hallucinate” or make mistakes.
AI apps will be introduced for all subjects except music, art, physical education and ethics by 2028, with teachers tracking activity via a digital dashboard. Students will be given digital literacy lessons to help them implement AI tools responsibly.
“AI-powered textbooks will enable teachers to assess each student’s learning level and pace based on their data and provide personalized instruction for each of them,” a government official said.
“Many students tend to fall asleep in class because some of them have already learned the content from private prep schools and others simply cannot follow the lessons,” the official added.[Soon] They will be able to think outside the box as AI textbooks provide various content for every situation and stimulate their interest in studying and help them think creatively.”
Other AI tools to be introduced into Korean classrooms include programs that can transcribe a teacher’s remarks onto an electronic whiteboard as they roam around the classroom. The country has also experimented with mobile robots that offer AI-generated responses to student queries.
But many observers remain wary of the government’s proposals. Shin Kwang-young, a sociology professor at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, said the government was trying to introduce AI textbooks “too hastily without properly assessing the side effects, just because AI is a megatrend these days.”
Over 50,000 parents have signed a petition calling on the government to give greater consideration to the general well-being of students. “We, as parents, are already experiencing many problems at unprecedented levels arising from [our children’s] exposure to digital devices,” the petition reads.
Lee Sun-young, 41, a mother of two school-age children who lives in Seoul, said she would prefer to see more extracurricular tutors hired to help students, rather than textbooks on artificial intelligence.
“I am concerned that excessive use of digital devices could negatively impact their brain development, their ability to concentrate and their ability to solve problems – they already use too many smartphones and tablets,” she said.
Nonetheless, the South Korean government’s introduction of AI-based textbooks has been welcomed by many teachers: 54 percent of public school teachers surveyed by the Korea Federation of Teachers’ Associations expressed support.
South Korea’s move bucks a trend in other developed countries, where governments have sought to limit or reduce children’s access to smartphones and tablets in schools.
AI in the classroom was at risk of “spinning out of control,” Shin said, due to the potential spread of misinformation, plagiarism and leaks of students’ personal data.
To address legitimate concerns about rote learning, the education system, including testing methods, needs to be “properly” revised, Shin added.
