https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/should-a-5-year-old-be-using-chatgpt-to-learn
2025-05-16
By---Sandra Davie is senior education correspondent at The Straits Times
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Recently, a grandparent posed this question in an e-mail to me: “Should my five-year-old granddaughter be using ChatGPT to learn spelling or mathematics?”
I wrote back to the retired school teacher asking for details on how exactly her granddaughter was using ChatGPT.
Mrs Tan, as she referred to herself, said that her granddaughter often uses ChatGPT on her parents’ phones or her iPad to ask questions such as how to spell a word or what is 2 + 2 and she would then repeat the answers given by the generative AI chatbot.
“And everyone would praise her for being so clever and I am not sure if they are referring to her being able to use AI or reciting the answers ChatGPT gives her,” said the grandmother. Having taught for over 20 years in a primary school, she had her doubts if indeed her granddaughter was really learning how to spell and count.
She had also noticed that her oldest grandson, a 15-year-old, was routinely using ChatGPT for his homework, including essays, although he claimed it was just to create outlines for his essays.
Compromising the basics
Mrs Tan is right to feel uneasy.
We often hear people extolling the benefits of using generative AI tools in education, from customised or personalised learning to providing real-time feedback to students. But there are many downsides when it comes to how children and the youth, including university students, are using AI to learn. Already there is early research suggesting that it is affecting young people’s ability to think critically and learn independently.
Let’s take the five-year-old for one, who is asking an AI chatbot to spell words out to her and do simple addition.
Literacy experts say it sets her back in her learning journey.
As one literacy expert explained – the child is probably learning to spell the word through rote memorisation.
She said: “It is similar to kindergarten kids being asked to memorise a list of words by sight, by spelling out the letters in a word – d. o. g. This is not the best way to teach spelling, and it is based on the misconceived notion that children learn to spell and read by memorising whole words.
“Consulting her teacher, on the other hand, would have opened up the opportunity to teach the child phonics, to sound out the word. It could have taught the child that sounds and letters have a relationship For example, kids learn that the letter D has the sound of “d” as in dog. Then they could be encouraged to learn other words that that start with the same D sound – like dot and doll and daughter. Decades of research demonstrate that phonics instruction, which teaches the relationship between letters and sounds, significantly benefits reading and spelling skills.”
Regarding mathematics – maths teachers recommend that pre-school children would learn addition more effectively by using physical objects, such as cubes or their toys, which allow them to touch, move and see concrete representations of abstract mathematical concepts.
Addition is one of the fundamental concepts in mathematics. Just as children learn to walk before they run, they need to understand addition before they can tackle more complex mathematics – such as substraction, multiplication and division.
When kids grasp addition, they can begin to understand how numbers relate to one another. For instance, when they learn that 2 + 2 = 4, they can also understand that if they have 4 cubes and take away 2, they are left with 2. This foundational knowledge is essential for their overall mathematical development.
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As for teens using ChatGPT to write their essays – it reminded me of my conversation with a teacher turned private tutor who is considering giving up tutoring because of his students using AI tools such as ChatGPT.
The private tutor prepares students for O-level and A-level English and takes much pride in his teaching skills which he has honed over more than a decade. But more recently he has become disheartened by the rampant use of ChatGPT by his students.
He said: “I used to get a lot of satisfaction from teaching kids to write, and to think as they write. And I would delight in reading some of their essays which showed that indeed they had learnt well from me.
“These days though, I am marking bland and boring robo essays, written with the help of AI.”
His frustration comes through when he talks about how he had taken pains to show his students the limitations of using AI tools and more importantly, how it detracts from their learning.
He has used samples of good essays written by some of his students and those written by ChatGPT, to show how AI, when used for revision, can alter the original meaning of a text.
He has shown them how AI tools such as ChatGPT put out biased and inaccurate information, even sheer nonsense because they tend to “hallucinate”.
Also, how AI will not help them develop their “own voice” in writing and it definitely won’t get them an “A” grade.
He said: “It did not matter to them. The majority of my students still use it and think I don’t know that. A quick, first read and I know. It’s just that I can’t always prove it.
“It comes from being lazy, and wanting to do things easily and in the shortest amount of time, so that they can go back to gaming or swiping mindlessly through social media. Learning to write, on the other hand, is hard and takes time.”
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That long, hard, satisfying grind
Indeed, as he said, genuine learning is hard work, painful even.
I recall how frightening and painful it was to write my literature and philosophy essays when I entered university. After hours of reading, I would hit upon the idea for an introduction and excitedly plunge into writing the first few paragraphs.
But soon, I would get lost in a tangle of ideas. It was especially hard to decide what to include and even harder, to decide which facts or arguments were of no use, and had to be discarded.
But I also recall the satisfaction and gratification I felt after pushing through the discomfort and difficulties to complete the task – knowing that I had learnt much in the process and it will stay with me and serve me for the rest of my life. Any learning with AI would be fleeting.
There is also the issue of plagiarism. But perhaps that’s part of the appeal of of generative AI – it allows students to plagiarise without guilt.
From the perspective of students, tapping ChatGPT is not copying. Besides they see generative AI as a practical tool akin to grammar checkers such as Grammarly or search engines.
It’ll be years before we can fully account for how exactly generative AI affects learning and cognitive development of young people.
But already some research shows that students’ capacity for memory, problem-solving and creativity suffers when they outsource their learning to chatbots.
Multiple studies published within the past year have linked AI usage with a deterioration in critical-thinking skills.
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One of the most publicised studies, done by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University, found a striking pattern: The more the participants, knowledge workers, trusted and used AI for certain tasks, the less they practised those skills – such as writing, analysis and critical evaluations – themselves.
As a result, they self-reported an atrophying of skills in those areas.
In the study, released just three months ago, several respondents said they started to doubt their abilities to perform tasks such as verifying grammar in text or composing legal letters, which led them to automatically accept whatever generative AI gave them.
Another significant finding: Those using AI for critical thinking tools were also more likely to produce “a less diverse set of outcomes for the same task, compared with those without”.
So it’s not just about losing our critical thinking abilities, but also our ability to think out of the box.
No, a five-year-old should not be using ChatGPT to learn.
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Sandra Davie is senior education correspondent at The Straits Times
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