Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom • Hacker News Board

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#181

Post by 3yr-i-frew-up » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #5

gritspants wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the advantage of learning 'AI workflows'. I am in the US and there seems to be a FOMO plague infecting our school system when it comes to technology. In practice it seems more destructive to the child.

I keep hearing this at work but so far no one has explained what “learning ai” actually means. It seems to just be nonsense like those people selling prompt recipes or claiming to be prompt engineers. No one needs training in prompting AI. I could understand if they meant a deeper layer of integrating tech with systems but all they ever mean is typing things in to a text box.

As someone who sells AI... You'd be shocked at how bad people are at using AI.

My 6 year old kid who watches me is a better prompter.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#182

Post by timcobb » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

3yr-i-frew-up wrote: post #179

My city, the 2nd richest in our state (And our county is the 3rd richest in the United States)... is considering banning AI in schools. I am horrified at how bad this could be for the students. Imagine growing up without a calculator or computer. They read books, they do long division, they manually graph. They graduate and are completely unprepared for the world. I pay well over $15,000/yr in property taxes because…

don't worry, they'll have plenty of opportunity to mess with AI. Fun thing about AI is that you just use it and helps you, I don't know that there's much to learn there in terms of end user experience.

On the other hand, the stuff that AI helps with (intelligence) is not something you can skip learning and expect a good outcome.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#183

Post by 3yr-i-frew-up » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

gritspants wrote: post #4

smatti wrote: post #2

A very similar development is going on in neighboring Finland. There are schools that use almost exclusively paper books (instead of digital ones) again. The overall consensus among parents is that books are way better than screens for kids, all the way up to high school. Hand-writing and free drawing with pen and paper provide many advantages to fixed screens. You cannot open a new tab to Youtube in a book. The sign…

I don't see the advantage of learning 'AI workflows'. I am in the US and there seems to be a FOMO plague infecting our school system when it comes to technology. In practice it seems more destructive to the child.

Luddite move.

Buddy AI is here to stay. You remind me of my 2nd grade teacher who said 'we wont have calculators in our pockets'.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#184

Post by theappsecguy » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

3yr-i-frew-up wrote: post #179

My city, the 2nd richest in our state (And our county is the 3rd richest in the United States)... is considering banning AI in schools. I am horrified at how bad this could be for the students. Imagine growing up without a calculator or computer. They read books, they do long division, they manually graph. They graduate and are completely unprepared for the world. I pay well over $15,000/yr in property taxes because…

Man, this is such an odd take. I don't need to imagine, I grew up in a country where math teachers would laugh you out of the classroom if you asked to use a calculator. Guess what? We did everything manually.

I then moved to North America for my last year of high school, and was appalled how much behind a typical 90th percentile student was compared to me and my peers back home. I was probably about 3-4 years ahead. It also took me 30 minutes to learn how to use the TI calculator that I now needed, but I was ahead in just about every other measurable way. So I would urge you to think twice about this. AI won't help your children develop their brains, it's offloading thinking to a statistical black box.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#185

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

mentalgear wrote: post #15

I remember that - even though Steve Jobs promoted the iPad as a replacement to the 'heavy schoolbooks kids had to carry all day' - he never allowed his children to use iPads. I bet Zuckerberg doesn't allow his children to use social media. And I assume that Sam Altman won't allow his children to use AI chatbots. What does that tell us?

[deleted]

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#186

Post by dylanowen » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

mcculley wrote: post #180

An idea I have been thinking about: Increasingly powerful chatbots provide more teaching capacity. I think this will lead to counterintuitive outcomes like teaching environments where the human student is not allowed to use any device but is being taught and tested by a synthetic intelligence.

That sounds very dystopian. The ai teacher part, not the no devices part

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#187

Post by zigman1 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

dmd wrote: post #175

zigman1 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Are you serious?? :o Sorry, this is the saddest sentence I have read in a long time.

Yep. A public school in NY suburbs in the early 1990s.

Well... I am sure someone made good money out of that.

In Slovenia, a post-Yugoslavian country, the school library coordinated a textbook borrowing scheme, where they would own all the material and lend it to students each year. Parents would pay a small "subscription", so each year or two one subject would get new books.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#188

Post by AdamN » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

3yr-i-frew-up wrote: post #183

gritspants wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the advantage of learning 'AI workflows'. I am in the US and there seems to be a FOMO plague infecting our school system when it comes to technology. In practice it seems more destructive to the child.

Luddite move. Buddy AI is here to stay. You remind me of my 2nd grade teacher who said 'we wont have calculators in our pockets'.

AI is important but we don't know what skills will be relevant in 10+ years to harness AI (I can't imagine prompt engineering is much the same). Anyway, would a typical teacher be ahead of the curve on what pedagogical tack to take here even if it was appropriate?

The best thing to do is to set the kids up to learn the most important thing - which is how to teach oneself. If a kid can read about something, and then understand what was important from the reading, and then write about it, and then know where to go next they will be well served in the AI world.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#189

Post by slibhb » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

The attempt to restrict screentime is based on today's parents wanting their children to have the same experiences they did, i.e. screens were the exception not the rule in the 90s through the early 2000s. This impulse is understandable, but it's not really about improving learning.

If the goal is actually to do a better job teaching kids, we need to better align incentives/minimize bureaucracy/measure outcomes better/etc. My sense is that there isn't an appetite for those sorts of changes. Largely because they hold children, parents, and teachers accountable in ways that make people uncomfortable.

Re: Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom

#190

Post by hombre_fatal » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

dylanowen wrote: post #186

mcculley wrote: post #180

An idea I have been thinking about: Increasingly powerful chatbots provide more teaching capacity. I think this will lead to counterintuitive outcomes like teaching environments where the human student is not allowed to use any device but is being taught and tested by a synthetic intelligence.

That sounds very dystopian. The ai teacher part, not the no devices part

That would have sadly be an improvement for the majority of teachers I've had in my life, even university classes because they were taught by a TA phd student I couldn't understand.