For children, using AI is quickly becoming less unusual.
They may use it to look something up, draft a sentence, ask about a word they do not understand, or generate ideas. AI is moving closer to children's everyday lives faster than many adults expect.
In December 2024, Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) published Version 2.0 of its "Guidelines on the Use of Generative AI in Elementary and Secondary Education." Compared to the provisional guidelines issued in July 2023, the revised version removed much of its restrictive language and encouraged more active use in classrooms.
More than five years after programming education became compulsory in Japanese elementary schools in 2020, education policy is now pivoting rapidly — from teaching children to write code to teaching them to wield AI.
Programming Education Was Always About Thinking, Not Coding
The goal of elementary-school programming education was never to produce software engineers. It was to cultivate "computational thinking" — the ability to decompose problems into steps and solve them systematically. The code itself was secondary; the underlying thought process was the target.
In practice, many schools struggled to move beyond surface-level tool use, and the depth of thinking-skill development was uneven across the country. Even so, the national rollout planted a foundational logical sensibility in millions of children — one that now serves as a launchpad for the next stage.
Three Abilities AI Literacy Education Aims to Build
AI literacy education is both an evolution of and a departure from programming education. MEXT explicitly frames the goal as nurturing "the qualities and abilities to command AI, not be commanded by it." That aspiration translates into three concrete competencies.
② Prompt design: The ability to articulate goals clearly, frame questions precisely, and iterate on instructions until the AI produces genuinely useful results.
③ Task allocation judgement: The ability to decide which tasks to delegate to AI and which require human reasoning, creativity, or ethical judgement.
None of these abilities can be learned from a textbook alone. Critical thinking is sharpened by actually catching AI errors. Prompt design improves through repeated interaction. Task allocation judgement develops only through real experience of what AI does well and where it fails. This is why hands-on AI use — not instruction about AI — is the irreplaceable core of AI literacy education.
The 2030 Curriculum Revision: A Policy Tailwind
In December 2024, the Minister of Education formally referred the next revision of Japan's national curriculum to the Central Council for Education. Implementation is expected from fiscal year 2030. The revision is widely expected to embed AI literacy as a substantive component of compulsory schooling — not an elective add-on but a core educational objective.
In the meantime, pilot schools designated under MEXT's generative AI programme — primarily at the middle school level and above — are accumulating practical evidence about what effective AI integration looks like. Their findings are being fed directly into the curriculum design process. AI literacy education is transitioning from experiment to standard.
The Hidden Risk: A Gap in Hands-On Experience
Because AI literacy is acquired through practice, the depth of a child's experience matters enormously. Even if school-based AI instruction improves nationwide, children who cannot continue exploring at home — because their household lacks a computer — will accumulate far less experience than their peers. The resulting gap in AI fluency may prove to be the defining educational inequality of the coming decade.
At Digital Kodomo BASE, we provide refurbished computers free of charge to children who lack one at home, and we keep our space in Ota Ward open as a place where any child can freely try AI, programming, and digital creation. As AI literacy becomes a core educational objective, we will keep creating that starting line — a device to experiment with and a space to learn in — so it is within reach of every child, regardless of their family's circumstances.