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

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

#401

Post by tzs »

graemep wrote: post #295
qurren wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They also talked a lot about how handwriting is super important for cognitive development. Is it possible that there are alternative ways than handwriting for cognitive development? Probably in 500 BC they said you had to hack at stone with a chisel for cognitive development, and then someone invented the pen and paper. The difference is the task had to change as well. People were able to write thousands of pages (…

Maybe not that early, but writing did eventually undermine the ability to memorise things. It used to be common for people to memorise long works - it is one reason why epic poetry was popular and designed to be memorable. Memorising even a few hundred lines is unusual now. I wonder whether it has contributed to the evolution of smaller brains: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240517-the-human-brain-...

> Memorising even a few hundred lines is unusual now.

Memorizing a few hundred lines of epic poetry probably is indeed unusual. But I bet most people have more than a few hundred lines of poetry in the form of song lyrics memorized (along with the tune of the song).

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

#402

Post by nextaccountic »

tzs wrote: post #401
graemep wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not that early, but writing did eventually undermine the ability to memorise things. It used to be common for people to memorise long works - it is one reason why epic poetry was popular and designed to be memorable. Memorising even a few hundred lines is unusual now. I wonder whether it has contributed to the evolution of smaller brains: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240517-the-human-brain-...

> Memorising even a few hundred lines is unusual now. Memorizing a few hundred lines of epic poetry probably is indeed unusual. But I bet most people have more than a few hundred lines of poetry in the form of song lyrics memorized (along with the tune of the song).

> (along with the tune of the song)

A lot of cultures that emphasize oral memorization will have things like this as memory aids

For example, Buddhist mantras have a specific way to pronounce, and if you alwaya do it this way memorizing becomes much easier

Or for a more Western thing, prayers also have a specific cadence that is learned alongside the text itself and that aid memorization

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

#403

Post by cpuguy83 »

Giving kids the worst machines money can buy paired with absolutely terrible "education" software which is little more than bubble sheets on a screen was obviously going to fail.

The problem isn't that kids can't learn on tech, it's that the whole thing was done in the worst way possible.

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

#404

Post by tzs »

szmarczak wrote: post #116
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…

> The overall consensus among parents is that books are way better than screens for kids Any scientific backing that screens are at fault? I don't think so. E-ink tablets do exist. When I'm having children, I'm buying them a remarkable with all the books scanned. Sure, they still need physical sheets of paper and a pen, but they don't have to carry 2-3 kgs of literature. The major reason against digital literature is…

I have personally found it is often easier to find things in a physical book. Say I want to look up an equation that I remember learning about from a particular book.

If it was a physical book there is a good chance I will remember a place for the equation, say about 3/4 of the way through the book, near the top of a left hand page and the right had page had a graph showing solutions of the equation.

I can then quickly riffle through the book to find that spot.

With an ebook I get much less sense of place. If what I read on has consistent paging so I've always seen that equation at the same place on the screen I might remember that but not much more. If the "search" function in the reader software isn't good enough to find the equation and I can't think of enough prose that was around it to find it by searching for that it is going to be harder to find than it is in the physical book.

I think the physical books is activating the same mental facilities that are used to organize memories of a physical journey through a space. An ebook doesn't do that for me.

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

#405

Post by kccqzy »

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?

In the Steve Jobs era (there was a very short overlap between the introduction of the iPad and the death of him) my local school did actually use iPads to replace books. It was fine. Students liked using features like search. What mattered was that (1) iPads then didn’t have multiple windows so students still took notes by hand; (2) the school also required almost all homework to be handwritten.

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

#406

Post by ziml77 »

something765478 wrote: post #177
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…

Absolutely. When I was in college, I had to stop using my laptop to take notes, as I would just always end up scrolling reddit for half the class. I switched to pen and paper, and while I almost never ended up looking at my notes, just the fact of manually writing them down helped me remember them.

That was my experience as well. I did best in the classes where I didn't have a laptop out. I had no temptations to be distracted and simply writing down the notes by hand was a huge benefit.

I suspect the people I see saying they were able to not get distracted when using a laptop in class are either outliers or liars.

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

#407

Post by luqtas »

FarmerPotato wrote: post #340
luqtas wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's no evidence on scientific pedagogic literature that "analog ways" are better than digital when you control variables like "your kid being able to open a tab to watch a non-related Youtube video". you can't use your sample of 10 kids to say anything, nor use poor journalism done into the topic, which cites single research with less than thousand participants and bias from the author by other scientists on the…

You assert a pretty strong view, on what basis? but your hypothesis is directionally wrong, as found in these trials: Screen readers take longer. Feis A, Lallensack A, Pallante E, Nielsen M, Demarco N, Vasudevan B. Reading Eye Movements Performance on iPad vs Print Using a Visagraph. J Eye Mov Res. 2021 Sep 14 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8557948/?utm_source... Another https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~srikur/f…

you managed to gather with all the research you cited minus the blog post, less than 100 participants. if you think this is enough to conclude anything i may warn you are tripping balls

i suggest you do some read, specially of effect sizes found in many studies showing "better performance" (minuscule effect size). there's a plethora of political things you'll ignore by thinking books are better. i gathered you some stuff (there are more than 200,000 people studied on the links i'm sending to you) and i truly hope you don't try to counter-argument by pointing some meta-analysis i linked concluding the analog is better. they admit the effect is minimal to negligent and if you actually consider studies done on text that user doesn't have to "scroll" but rather advance the page with a tap/pgDN and the user don't have their social media hooked on their device (muted or absent), there literally NO EVEDIENCE of any difference between paper and digital learning

[0] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2024-16892-001

[1] https://futureofreading.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1-s2.0...

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10606230/

[3] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10639-025-13843-8

[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277250302...

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

#408

Post by rendaw »

pier25 wrote: post #199

I worked in EdTech about a decade ago and our education/pedagogy experts were already talking about this. They also talked a lot about how handwriting is super important for cognitive development. After working on that company for a couple of years I realized using tech in education (pre university) was a mistake. One of the reasons I left. In a decade or two the long term consequences of inundating kids with tech an…

How is handwriting important for cognitive development?

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

#409

Post by ziml77 »

kbelder wrote: post #396
jasonmp85 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is written with what feels like the peak understanding of my kid's school's IT department: "well, they're just so smart, we can't find any way of stopping them!" An allowlist might be a good place to start.

That might slow them down. Could any of the IT professionals, here, think of a way around it? Then likely the kids could.

They don't even have to think of a way around any of it. They just need to search online to find someone who has found a way around it. Or prompt AI to come up with a solution. And even if someone is so dull that they don't think about that, it will probably make it to them as the info spreads by word of mouth.
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