Sweden bringing text books and handwriting classes back into the classroom

[thewayne]

The interesting thing is that Sweden is a highly regarded education system, they simply are not convinced that cramming technology education down the throats of students at an early age is conducive to actual education. They're removing tablets from early education, which I am absolutely a supporter of. And the students and teachers seem to be responding positively to it.

Personally I think the American education system could benefit from this. I think it's a crutch to funnel ever increasing amounts of money to equipment and textbook makers.

https://apnews.com/article/sweden-digital-education-backlash-reading-writing-1dd964c628f76361c43dbf3964f7dbf4

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/09/13/2257252/sweden-brings-more-books-and-handwriting-practice-back-to-its-tech-heavy-schools

Comments

[kathmandu]

"Funnel ever-increasing amounts of money to equipment and textbook makers" does sound likely.

[thewayne]

We were warned about the military/industrial complex when Eisenhower retired.  Other industries are taking cues on how to develop perpetual money trains from governments, and this is one.  Another is cloud-based services.

[disneydream06]

Three Cheers for Sweden.
Hugs, Jon

[motodraconis]

I think you've put your finger on it, it's all about squeezing money.

[kaishin108]

That does seem wise! No need to start using all of that so early!

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Especially since studies show that people remember things better from handwriting than from typing.

Re: Yes ...

[thewayne]

Absolutely!

[silveradept]

That article is short on details about the decisions being made, and rather quickly veers off into "in other countries, they're trying to do this" rather than providing any kind of solid justification for the reasoning as to why the Swedes are going back to textbooks. The closest hint we get from that is the comment about going back to vetted materials, rather than using what's freely available, which suggests that the digital materials were the problem, rather than the technology. I'm still in favor of small children not having lots of screen time, and what screen time there is is highly interactive with their caregivers and grown-ups, because that's best practices. And I think the USians mentioned, who are cognizant of the divide between what the right can access and the poor can access, are doing a better job of making the case for print materials than what the Swedes supposedly are in the piece.