2023-09-10 07:40:02
STOCKHOLM (AP) — When young children returned to school in Sweden last month, many of their teachers placed a new emphasis on printed books, silent reading times and handwriting exercises, and spent less time to tablets, independent internet research and typing skills.
The return to more traditional ways of learning was a response to politicians and experts who questioned whether the country’s hyper-digital strategy in education, such as the introduction of tablets in kindergartens, has led to a decline in basic skills.
Swedish Schools Minister Lotta Edholm, who took office 11 months ago within a new center-right coalition government, was one of the biggest critics of the big commitment to technology.
“Swedish students need more textbooks,” Edholm said in March. “Physical books are important for student learning.”
The minister announced last month in a statement that the government wants to revoke the National Education Agency’s decision to make digital devices mandatory in preschool. It also plans to go further and completely abandon digital learning for children under six years old, the ministry told The Associated Press.
Although the country’s students achieve results above the European average in reading ability, an international study of reading levels in fourth grade, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, highlighted a decline among Swedish children between 2016 and 2021.
In 2021, Swedish fourth graders scored an average of 544 points, a drop from the average of 555 in 2016. However, their result still put the country in a tie with Taiwan for seventh overall.
In comparison, Singapore – which led the list – improved its rating from 576 to 587 in that period, while the average in England fell slightly, from 559 in 2016 to 558 in 2021.
Some learning difficulties could be the result of the coronavirus pandemic or reflect an increase in immigrant students who do not have Swedish as their first language, but excessive use of screens in classes could cause young people to fall behind in basic subjects, according to education experts.
“There is clear scientific evidence that scientific tools hinder rather than boost student learning,” Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said last month in a statement on the national digitalization strategy in education.
“We believe that the emphasis should return to acquiring knowledge through printed texts and knowledge from teachers, rather than acquiring knowledge primarily from freely available digital sources whose accuracy has not been reviewed,” said the institute, a respected medical school. focused on research.
The rapid adoption of digital learning tools has also raised concerns at the United Nations education and culture agency.
In a report published last month, UNESCO made an “urgent call for the appropriate use of technology in education.” The report urged countries to speed up internet connections in schools, but at the same time warned that technology in education must be implemented in a way that never replaces in-person, teacher-led instruction and that supports the common goal of education of quality for everyone.
In the Swedish capital, Stockholm, Liveon Palmer, 9, who attends third grade at Djurgardsskolan primary school, gave his approval to spending more hours offline at school.
“I like to write more in school, like on paper, because it just feels better, you know,” he told the AP during a recent visit.
Her teacher, Catarina Branelius, said she was already selective in asking her students to use tablets in their lessons before the nationwide review.
“I use tablets in math and we use some apps, but I don’t use tablets for writing texts,” Branelius said. Students under 10 years old, he noted, “need time and practice in handwriting (…) before introducing them to writing on a tablet.”
Education through the internet is a hotly debated topic throughout Europe and other parts of the West. Poland, for example, just launched a program to give a government-funded laptop to every student starting in fourth grade, in an attempt to make the country more competitive in technology.
In the United States, the coronavirus pandemic caused public schools to provide millions of laptops purchased with federal pandemic relief money to elementary and high school students. But there remains a digital divide, which is part of the reason American schools tend to use both print and digital textbooks, said Sean Ryan, president of the American school division at textbook publisher McGraw Hill.
“In places where there is no connectivity at home, educators are reluctant to rely on digital because they think about their most vulnerable (students) and want to make sure they have the same access to education as everyone else,” Ryan explained.
Germany, which is one of the richest countries in Europe, is known for its slowness in bringing government programs and information of all kinds, including education, to the Internet. The state of digitalization in schools also varies depending on the 16 states in the country, which are responsible for their own curriculum.
Many students can complete their education without any required digital instruction, such as coding. Some parents are concerned that their children may not be able to compete in the job market with young people from other countries with more technological training.
Sascha Lobo, a German writer and internet consultant, believes a national effort is needed to bring German students up to speed, or the country risks being left behind in the future.
“If we don’t manage to do digital education, learn how digitalization works, then we will no longer be a prosperous country in 20 years,” he said in an interview last year with public broadcaster ZDF.
To counter the decline in reading ability in fourth grade, the Swedish government announced an investment worth 685 million crowns (60 million euros or $64.7 million) in book purchases for the country’s schools this year . In addition, another 500 million crowns will be dedicated annually in 2024 and 2025 to accelerate the return of textbooks to schools.
Not all experts are convinced that Sweden’s back-to-basics initiative alone is best for students.
Criticizing the effects of technology is “a popular initiative among conservative politicians,” said Neil Selwyn, an education professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. “It is a clear way of saying or indicating a commitment to traditional values.”
“The Swedish government does have a valid argument in saying that there is no evidence that technology improves learning, but I think that is because there is no clear evidence of what technology works,” Selwyn added. “Technology is only one part of a very complex system of factors in education.”
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Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco; Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Poland, and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.
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