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Sweden is bringing back books amid declining test scores:
In 2023, the Swedish government announced that the country's schools would be going back to basics, emphasizing skills such as reading and writing, particularly in early grades. After mostly being sidelined, physical books are now being reintroduced into classrooms, and students are learning to write the old-fashioned way: by hand, with a pencil or pen, on sheets of paper. The Swedish government also plans to make schools cellphone-free throughout the country.
Educational authorities have been investing heavily. Last year alone, the education ministry allocated $83 million to purchase textbooks and teachers' guides. In a country with about 11 million people, the aim is for every student to have a physical textbook for each subject. The government also put $54 million towards the purchase of fiction and non-fiction books for students.
These moves represent a dramatic pivot from previous decades, during which Sweden—and many other nations—moved away from physical books in favor of tablets and digital resources in an effort to prepare students for life in an online world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Nordic country's efforts have sparked a debate on the role of digital technology in education, one that extends well beyond the country's borders. US parents in districts that have adopted digital technology to a great extent may be wondering if educators will reverse course, too.
So why did Sweden pivot? In an email to Undark, Linda Fälth, a researcher in teacher education at Linnaeus University, wrote that the "decision to reinvest in physical textbooks and reduce the emphasis on digital devices" was prompted by several factors, including questions around whether the digitalization of classrooms had been evidence-based. "There was also a broader cultural reassessment," Fälth wrote. "Sweden had positioned itself as a frontrunner in digital education, but over time concerns emerged about screen time, distraction, reduced deep reading, and the erosion of foundational skills such as sustained attention and handwriting."
Fälth noted that proponents of reform believe that "basic skills—especially reading, writing, and numeracy—must be firmly established first, and that physical textbooks are often better suited for that purpose."
[...] Swedish officials emphasize that digital technology isn't being removed from schools altogether. Rather, digital aids "should only be introduced in teaching at an age when they encourage, rather than hinder, pupils' learning." Achieving digital competence remains an important objective, particularly in higher grades.
[...] If US educational leaders were to consult their Swedish colleagues, the advice they'd likely get is not to remove digital technology whole cloth. "The goal is recalibration rather than reversal," wrote Fälth. This was echoed in a statement sent to Undark by the Swedish Ministry of Education and Research: The "Swedish government believes that digitalization is fundamentally important and beneficial, but the use of digital tools in schools must be carried out carefully and thoughtfully."
In other words, the objective is not to reject digitalization. It's more nuanced than that. The goal is to judiciously establish boundaries around technology's selective and sequential use over stages of a pupil's educational development. This means introducing digital technology at later ages after basic reading and other skills have been achieved.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by looorg on Wednesday April 08, @10:55PM
This is really the main reasoning behind it. If you can't master the basics first then what use are the tools. If you can't read, write and do basic math then what kind of help do you have from the machine. How will you even learn from it if you can't ask it for help or understand what it tells you. If you don't know it then how can you trust or utilize what the machine offers. Or if you will it kind of turned out that you can't just skip the basics and go straight to the advanced stuff. If you want to learn advanced things it is kind of essential that you first grasp the basics. They tried desperately to skip the basics with that old saying "kids today knows so much about computers and so on". Turns out they don't. Clicking icons and using their phone 24-7 isn't really as helpful as initially thought.
https://lnu.se/en/staff/linda.falth/ [lnu.se]
But this bring back the books is just a step in the grand plan. As noted it's not about getting rid of the machines. It's about learning the basics first so that you can utilize the machines. After all if you don't know the basics then how can you use the machines and use it to gather and gain knowledge. Just searching for things isn't really knowledge or learning. If the "knowledge" is tied to your internet connection then that ain't knowledge.
But there are a lot of other adjacent and related things that have happened at the same time. Such as once again mandating that every school should have its own library (again). They used to have that when I went to school. But then the Internet was not really available for schools. When I went there was no internet. I had to go to the college next door to get access (and use their awesome Sun Workstations). I guess it turns out that getting rid of the libraries, the librarians and all the books just wasn't such as big money saver after all. But during the laptop years (or whatever we should call them) the libraries where turned into "relax corners" with couches and things for the students to relax in.
Also testing revealed that students just didn't improve or become better from having all the knowledge of the interwebz and technology at their fingertips. They did not learn more, better or faster. Turned out this the Google-knowledge was just there for as long as the machine was there and you had access. After all why bother to learn anything if you can just look it up every time. They hoped that perhaps eventually it would stick. It doesn't appear to have.
Then Sweden also gazed longingly at Finland mainly. Why are their pupils so much better then ours and so forth. Turns out they still put a lot of emphasis on learning the basics first. So we want to be like them. And try to be like them by just copying them.
There are other curriculum changes that have been enforced over the years on more "soft" skills and knowledge. Some call them "woke". Turns out they are not very useful or easy to measure. Seems certain adults liked them more then the kids did. But those are now being sort of scaled back quietly as not to anger certain crowds.
For a long time there was also an emphasis on that students should learn by themselves or they should seek the knowledge themselves. Teachers was more like friends that should use the force and guide them. They should not use angry red pens to mark errors and stress out the poor students. As that would be very unfriendly of them. This had horrible drawback. After all friend not teacher was seen as being more important. Which led us down the same path once more -- if you don't have any actual knowledge it's really hard to gather more knowledge. Just searching for things on Google, or AI and just swallow everything it tells you, isn't really learning. Then if you learn the "wrong" things they are really REALLY hard to correct or undo that at a later stage, like years later when you get them as students at the university and they can't do basic maths or read anything longer then a tweet before their brain hurts.
It probably have not helped either that they keep changing the grading system every few years or so. Most of them doesn't last a decade before they feel like tweaking it.
Then there is that most stupid of stupid things we, Sweden, did when we allowed schools to be run as a business. Yes, we have companies that run schools for profit. It's very rare on the university/college level, there are a few. But it's quite common on the high school level. Perhaps in theory it was a good idea. But in practice horrible. As it turns out these companies wants to make a profit. Then only way they can do that is to have less teachers, unqualified teachers, less books and such things that cost money. After all there is no tuition fees from the parents or anything, there are those schools to be they are extremely rare and mostly for the mega rich kids. Also they had a clear incentive to fudge with grades and such to sell an image of them being the good school. So they could get more pupils applying and make more money ...