Back to books - Sweden's schools cutting back on digital learning

I teach. There are zero screens, anywhere. Kids have to drop off their phones at the begining of the day, and get them back when leaving. Everything is pen and paper. It's a lot harder to be distracted when all you have is a desk, a pen and a piece of paper.

People figuring out that learning is a process and not a product. Who would guess...

Honestly I think this is the correct move, screens just aren't working in quite the same way and it's depressing how much time children spend in front of electronics. The more we can give them time away from the digital the better, not least for their attention spans.

Digital learning should have been about hypertext. Instead educators mostly duplicated paper in a digital form, because it was cheaper and easier to distribute than a paper physical medium. Then, via the digital medium, educators allowed everything not relevant to learning to be distributed via it as well. The modern take on the schoolboy reading a large textbook in class that had a copy of Playboy sneaked between its pages.

Scandinavians doing things they do best - setting right examples for rest to follow. Children getting exposed to screens in early age is detrimental. Attention span, Lack of focus, not experiencing physical touch and connection to books, the smell of books and then storing them away and reminiscing over them growing older. Joys of life.

Pleaseee bring this to Canada. I don’t care if they have dedicated time in a Chromebook “room” but the amount of screens being pulled out in the class (and tv watching during lunchtime) has got to stop.

Excellent

I still use physical books when I'm learning as an adult. less distractions and it's more of a real commitment to sit down with a book, pen and notepad to learn something than to just browse something on a screen with notifications interrupting you every 2 minutes.

The Ontario Longitudinal Study published by researchers at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and the University of Ottawa is widely cited because it tracked over 3,000 children across 15 years, providing a level of "cause-and-effect" data that shorter studies lack.  The Primary Study (2025/2026) • Key Finding: Every additional hour of daily screen time in early childhood (pre-age 8) was associated with a 9% to 10% lower likelihood of meeting standardized learning standards in Grade 3 and Grade 6.  Specific Results for K-12 The study utilized data from the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) to link home habits to school performance:  • Reading and Math: High screen users were significantly less likely to achieve "Level 3" (the provincial standard) in both Grade 3 reading and Grade 6 math.  • Writing: Interestingly, the study found limited impact on writing, suggesting that screen use specifically degrades the cognitive pathways used for logical math processing and reading comprehension more than creative or technical writing.  • The "Attention Train": The researchers concluded that screens "train" the brain to expect rapid-fire stimulation, which directly conflicts with the sustained, deep attention required for K-12 classroom environments. Additionally… UNESCO "Global Education Monitoring Report": This report famously called for a global ban on smartphones in schools. It cited data showing that even having a phone near a student (the "mere presence" effect) reduced their test scores because the brain uses significant energy just resisting the urge to check the device.

Digital learning has proven to be quite inferior to analog learning. My SO tutors and even the smart kids struggle due to the inherent shittiness of digital learning tools. I feel sorry for kids learning using mostly digital teaching.

I wish my kids school would drop iPads for the core learning.

Live in Korea and the previous government focused on AI textbooks and everybody - students, parents, teachers - all hated it. New curriculum involves more critical thinking. This is the way to go as they will be using a screen literally every other moment of the day so at least at school they should learn basic socialization as well as more deeper ways of learning. I assume the issue is that governments and education policy/education office types who aren't actually in classrooms get duped by snake oil salespeople selling cheaper and "better" ways of education. They throw around buzzwords to sell their products and the result is people on the ground get screwed and the kids get dumber. As usual, all about money.

Computers/screens in schools should only be for research projects, core lessons should be from a textbook. I also think textbooks should be produced by the authority responsible for curriculum guidelines, so in theory, since everyone gets the same textbook with the same basic learning inside, they should learn about the same stuff- teachers could of course spend more or less time on different things but if the curriculum says your supposed to do the history of rome then the history of rome would be covered at least very basically.

digital learning is future they should learn how to live in the AI world

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It's outrageous how many people including this comment section thinks this will fix anything. The answer is literally right in front of us and yet we ignore it like it's an impossible task. The answer is obviously hybrid. Just increase the budget and provide students a touchscreen laptop or something that allows them to multitask, view PDF, write down notes while not having a bulk of screens covering them from their teachers. No but instead, what we have as a digital learning is a PDF slapped on a screen making it impossible to learn at all. Meanwhile Khan Academy, Brilliant and even Duolingo for language awareness provide real results in self learning and intuition. Even AI contributes a lot in education, especially with learning coding. All of these have one thing in common, and that's interactivity. So no, the issue isn't digital mediums. The issue is lazy government executions. Also what made people actually assume traditionalism learning would make anything better? In an era of short form content and doom scrolling, they most likely won't retain what they learn. Plus, even parents admit that they do their child homework. So reality is, nothing really changes cause the root cause still exists. Plus think of the people who don't have the resources or the cash? Not everyone has a luxury life to buy multiple books, pen and paper. Plus, too many books can also cause bad posture to the student which is a reason why we switched from traditional to digital. Because a technology can with stand more resources than a physical medium. This argument of digital system make students dumber fall flat when you actively compare with Asian kids especially East Asians. Even Japan found the middle ground of providing an hybrid method. Meanwhile China has high success rates in their digital education program. People are viewing this one sided which is humanity takes longer to revolutionize a broken system that the intended timeline.

if I hed screens back in school I would watch p*** and masterbate in class whole day 

A little fascism for you today, Sweden