20 ms·

Sweden brings more books and handwriting practice back to its tech-heavy schools

• version_five 3y ago
  My guess is it's not technology per se that's the problem but that it gets used primarily to make the teacher's life easier and substitute for them giving lessons and feedback. Also, ed-tech built by the lowest bidder is always going to be crap. Imagine "learning" as a kid in the same way that corporate training is done. I think this is the right move, even if it's technically solvable to provide good tech-heavy education, I don't see it as practically possible.
  • belugacat 3y ago
    Yes. From the article: > “We believe the focus should return to acquiring knowledge through printed textbooks and teacher expertise, rather than acquiring knowledge primarily from freely available digital sources that have not been vetted for accuracy,” said the institute, a highly respected medical school focused on research. Why were schools using unvetted materials in the first place!? > it's not technology per se that's the problem That said, handwriting practice is correlated to developing fine motor skills, which are documented to be in decline in children in a number of countries. Excessive time with (touch)screens is terrible on that front.
    • ta1243 3y ago
      My son could print perfectly legibly about age 7, then the schools tarted forcing letter shapes that were far harder to read with loops and smears etc. His handwriting then devolved into a spidery mess which was impossible to read, which meant that marks started slipping. Joined up handwriting is a disgusting unrequired curse on society. If you want to do "beautiful calligraphy" (unreadable scrawl) that's fine, have an optional class.
      • bobabob 3y ago
        I had perfectly joined up handwriting by that same age. They should've let your son continue to use his perfectly legibly print but that doesn't mean that calligraphy is necessarily unreadable, just that your son was bad at it.
        • hotnfresh 3y ago
          The cursive hand they taught when I was in elementary school was just ugly as sin and hard to read. Has a name, I forget, it’s the one that’s been standard in most US schools for decades, all linked up loops and curves, hardly a straight line in sight. I read once that it looks a ton better and the strokes are better-motivated if you’re using a nib pen, because lots of the back sides of loops get a thinner line which improves legibility, and the style helps orient the nib the right way as you go, which I hope is the case because otherwise I have no clue why anyone would have ever liked it or selected it to teach children I’ve seen tons of others that are simpler, closer to print writing, and much easier to read (fewer extra loops and hoops on letters, crap like that) and I wish they’d taught us one of those, if they had to teach us cursive.
          • Symbiote 3y ago
            Last time this was discussed on HN, I was surprised how 'loopy' the standard American handwriting style taught in schools was. In Britain it's much less fancy [1]. It's also normal to use a fountain pen from around age 7 — at least, I did in the 1990s, and they're still widely sold in shops. These examples seem to be pencil and a rollerball pen though. (For more images, search "joined up writing primary school" as young children don't often use the word "cursive".) [1] https://skidbyprimaryschool.org.uk/curriculum-intent/english-writing-handwriting-2018/ https://skidbyprimaryschool.org.uk/curriculum-intent/english... (Year 1 = age 5-6, Year 6 = age 10-11).
      • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Is he left handed? I had a similar experience, being left handed writing cursive at 2nd grade at 7-8 caused me to almost fail by 3rd grade (my parents switched me to a private learning disability school…which was super easy).
    • WillAdams 3y ago
      Possibly because things such as: https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm... didn't get grandfathered in, but more likely because teachers just search for: https://www.google.com/search?q=handwriting+worksheets https://www.google.com/search?q=handwriting+worksheets and grab the first free result. That said, I would recommend: https://www.handwritingrepair.info/ https://www.handwritingrepair.info/ and https://sites.google.com/view/briem/free-books https://sites.google.com/view/briem/free-books
    • dotnet00 3y ago
      I think what they might be implying is that electronics make it very easy for teachers to rely on potentially inaccurate sources on the internet. Rather than that there aren't vetted sources that are acceptable to use (there probably are). I somewhat tend to agree, assuming that the quality of teachers in Sweden is comparable to my own experience. In hindsight many teachers I had (especially for earlier grades) weren't likely to be better than the average rando taken off the street when it comes to vetting the material they use. Only upon getting to university did it finally seem like the free/open source materials some professors liked to use were vetted.
    • michaelt 3y ago
      > Why were schools using unvetted materials in the first place!? Eh, who knows what 'vetted for accuracy' means to this guy? I mean, is Wikipedia allowed? What about Khan Academy, this Sal Khan guy doesn't hold even the lowest swedish teacher's qualification. And that's without getting into the vetting of history textbooks. I can well believe the rush to online learning during the pandemic lead to the use of material some people would consider unvetted.
      • zx8080 3y ago
        > And that's without getting into the vetting of history textbooks. Do you mind clarifying this part?
        • deafpolygon 3y ago
          Not the OP but depending on where you live - people have a different interpretation of history and may not agree on all the various educational texts out there. That's just putting it lightly.
    • amadeuspagel 3y ago
      > Why were schools using unvetted materials in the first place!? Maybe to train the kids in vetting materials themselves? Seems like an important skill. It's incredible that in school you're never confronted two contradictory sources of information and have to decide which is right.
      • paddim8 3y ago
        Yes, that's it. They talk a lot about how to find reliable sources, because they know students are going to look on the internet either way.
      • Symbiote 3y ago
        The main point of my history lessons at school was looking at different sources (primary, secondary etc) and assessing them for bias. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z6gv6v4/articles/zxqssk7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/z6gv6v4/articles/zxqss... (for age 11-14, not sure exactly which year this page is aimed at).
    • zx8080 3y ago
      > "...knowledge primarily from freely available digital sources that have not been vetted for accuracy...” Wikipedia?
  • nonethewiser 3y ago
    > My guess is it's not technology per se that's the problem but that it gets used primarily to make the teacher's life easier and substitute for them giving lessons and feedback I think this is highly likely given what they are cutting back on is “independent online research.”
  • justbored123 3y ago
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  • martindbp 3y ago
    All of school is structured around the fact that there is about one teacher per 30 students. Of course teachers will use tech as a way to reduce their own burnout. We know how to make a much better school: more competent teachers and more of them, ideally so that each student has a ton of one-on-one time with teachers daily. Whether books are paper or writing is by hand is really insignificant consideration compared to all the other shortcomings of school. Thankfully every student will soon have a very knowledgeable, perfectly patient and available teacher: ChatGPT. At first I was skeptical schools will use them, since they don't tend to understand technology very well, but I think some schools will see the potential to relieve the pressure on their teachers and others will follow when they see the positive outcomes for students. If allowed, ChatGPT will also allow teachers to spend less time on administrative tasks, which is one of the reasons why they're so burned out in the first place.
• danwee 3y ago
  As long as schools allow to store books in their buildings... I keep seeing (in Europe) kids with school bags full of notebooks and books that easily weight 4-5 KG. That's not healthy. The problem I see is that kids have homework that require the books at home, but then teachers use the books at classroom... so, they need to carry them here and there.
  • batch12 3y ago
    Why is carrying 5kg of books unhealthy for children?
    • kranke155 3y ago
      It’s unhealthy to carry them in modern backpacks id say. Poor design in a lot of them helps contribute to back problems
      • jwestbury 3y ago
        I've spent a lot of time hiking and backpacking. I've also had to walk five miles home (that's about 8km for those not in insane countries that start with "United") when buses or trains were cancelled due to weather. I absolutely refuse to buy a backpack without a hip belt of some sort, because while you might not really need it for the five-minute walk from the bus stop or train station to the office, that changes when you're carrying it for a two-hour walk in the snow.
        • naavis 3y ago
          Yep, a hip belt on a backpack makes a world of difference when you can put most of the weight on your hips instead of your shoulders.
        • kranke155 3y ago
          As a child I remember doing 45min + a day with them Thank you for the tip btw I am soon in the market for a backpack and will take care to get a good chest strap
• atonse 3y ago
  Handwriting is one of those things I seem to have an argument with my son (he’s 10). And it isn’t about him having that specific skill. But it’s about having a sense of pride in your work and not half-assing things. But my wife and I struggle to get anyone to agree with us. The teachers don’t seem to care (which my son is happy to relay to me). Other parents say why bother, it’s an outdated skill (I actually disagree, even though my handwriting is often bad from lack of practice, when I do fill up forms by hand, I understand the importance of legibility). But again, to me it is symptomatic of a larger issue where I feel that more and more, kids are not taught to have a sense or standard in the quality of their work and improve upon it, regardless of the particular skill. I still remember my grandfather telling us, everything you do, you must strive to do it well. It was about having pride in your work. Am I alone in this? Looking for a good counterpoint.
  • toxik 3y ago
    It is a well-established fact that the mechanical act of handwriting notes is good for memorization. Perhaps it is meditative, perhaps we're just physical beings -- whatever it is, typewriting on a computer is not as good. A famous man whose name I forget once said "Plans are useless, planning is indispensable," and I would like to paraphrase it as "notes are useless, note-taking is indispensable."
    • brtkdotse 3y ago
      > "notes are useless, note-taking is indispensable." This is very, very true for me. I read, optimistically, 5% of my notes. As a corollary, I’m unable to take notes if the notepad is too fancy. I get analysis paralysis from something like a moleskine, like something this nice deserves nicely formatted notes. Only cheapo gas station notpads work for me.
      • throw1234651234 3y ago
        haha college-ruled exam workbooks for me. Basic as can be.
      • dzhiurgis 3y ago
• JR1427 3y ago
  I want my daughter (aged four) to enjoy writing by hand. It's part creative, part practical, but I also think that humans have a connection to the physical act of making things, or marks, that will take a (very) long time to go away, and that we will yearn for if we stop. That said, I love making things, drawing, painting etc, but have terrible handwriting, and mostly hate doing it! My teachers never let me get my "pen licence", so to this day I much prefer a mechanical pencil.
• agomez314 3y ago
  Hasn't it been proved as well that writing things out by hand is the most effective way to memorize things? Wouldn't all schools want to teach this valuable tool to students?
  • lapama 3y ago
    I am a scientist and over the last years I stopped using notebooks for notes... I lost something, you connect deeper with your thoughts by writing with hand. Now I occasionally use A3 papers when I see need, but still. I will take a notebook tomorrow!
    • chamanbuga 3y ago
      I haven't looked into this, just responding intuitively, but aren't we trained to learn better by writing by hand because of our upbringing. If the next generation stops hand writing and starts typing from early childhood education, wouldn't it be the same for them?
      • waynesonfire 3y ago
        "New research has analyzed brainwave patterns in both children and young adults while they wrote by hand and as they typed on a keyboard. The results revealed distinctly different brain patterns between the activities, leading the researchers to suggest learning is more effective when it is accompanied by handwriting."
  • magicalhippo 3y ago
    That was certainly my experience when going to university. They were phasing in digital classes of sorts, so pressured lecturers to use PowerPoint or similar. I recalled almost nothing from those lectures, as it was impossible to take notes and listen at the same time. And without taking notes I'd forget. The blackboard ones though, with carefully prepared notes by the lecturer... I'd write it all down, and would hardly ever had to look at them again as it stuck right away. However, I did have to write it down.
  • 3y ago
• blackhaz 3y ago
  The onslaught of greedy Google and Microsoft execs on our education system will not allow this to happen.
• iamnotsure 3y ago
  It's about clay tablets.
• lofaszvanitt 3y ago
  Good decision. Just like with Covid lockdowns. Somehow when you are away from a screen your mind expands, at least for me. Like the screen craves your attention and robs your thoughts. When I have some kind of problem with coding, I just move away from the computer, get a notebook, start scribbling and writing down things and the solution just comes.
  • deleted 3y ago
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• konschubert 3y ago
  Those digital blackboards are pretty bad. They are laggy and have lower resolution than a chalk board or a whiteboard. And what for? What can they do that a whiteboard cannot? (teachers should write on a board and not use slides, because slides cause teachers to go too fast and to jump over important details.
  • Manuel_D 3y ago
    Easy to erase. Easy to show slides, videos, or animations. Easy to annotate said media with the digital market. Slides are entirely appropriate, especially if the teacher is teaching the same class multiple times per day.
    • bitwize 3y ago
      Just wheel in the frickin' TV on a cart! Is that so hard?
      • approxim8ion 3y ago
        Where I studied, every classroom had a blackboard and a projector, with the rollable white screen just above the board. When you show slides, roll out the screen. When you need the board, either use the portion beside the screen or roll up the screen if you don't need it at all.
    • konschubert 3y ago
      > Slides are entirely appropriate, especially if the teacher is teaching the same class multiple times per day. I have had Maths professors who were teaching the same class for decades. They would pencil it all out on the blackboard. We copied it by hand. This slowed everything down and we got time to digest the content. First questions could be asked and answered. And yes, we all had laptops, but we kept them in the backpack. It was awesome. (German university ~10 years ago)
  • ecshafer 3y ago
    When I was in highschool my teachers started getting SmartBoards. Every class then spent some amount of time fiddling with the Smart Board, getting it to work, debugging it. For them to... just not write with a marker on the white board right next to it? It was a worse product for more money.
• 6stringmerc 3y ago
  There are numerous studies regarding the brain and dexterity development but they got co-opted by the video game and quick fix industry. If you want to learn how to write with an active mind, you can’t have assists. Pencil is okay with erasing, pen is permanent. Oh well.
  • deleted 3y ago
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• INTPenis 3y ago
  I actually had hand-writing in school, in Sweden in the late 90s. But since I didn't practice it outside of school, and was such a computer nerd, I can't write good at all now. Whenever I have to sign like 3 copies of a contract, I sign with 3 different signatures. For a while I had a pen pal and that was very good practice, but it was slow, and painful to write a whole letter. I'd have to keep it up daily.
  • the-smug-one 3y ago
    I don't think they'll be taught "skrivstil"/cursive, I think it's literally going from less iPads where you play Hangman or whatever to learn to read to more reading and writing. Cursive sucks ass, I hated doing that so much.
• renewiltord 3y ago
  Interesting. My parents did all my handwriting practice when I was a child so that I could go out and play. Our school graded on exams and labs alone which I aced. My handwriting remained rubbish as I aced my undergraduate program, remained rubbish as I started work in software, and has remained rubbish as I've climbed from success to success. Contra-other-posts, I don't think I would have learned anything of value from handwriting. Perhaps my exam scores would have been higher as some things weren't misunderstood. I also relied on zero notes during lectures, instead finding that close attention lead to near complete recall in class, but I suffered when I tried taking notes as an experiment. My Algebraic Geometry class was a complete disaster. Ideally, if I had to make tradeoffs, my children would be like me: with good alphanumeric and concept recall from memory. I think it is superior to note-taking.
• Trombone12 3y ago
  > new center-right coalition Holy fascist washing batman! There's no centre party in the Tidö government, it just has conservatives puppeteer by a far right party founded by neo-Nazis...
• roody15 3y ago
  Having worked in 1:1 schools and seen phone use / laptop has in the classroom this seems a step in the right direction. Tech is not the answer to everything in education it is just a useful tool that can and should be used from time to time like. Like a calculator but a more versatile. What we have in many classrooms is a tech nightmare where tasks are digitized for just the sake of digitizing and attention span is lost, deep learning and concentration is lost and meaning relationships between student / student or student / instructor are diminished.
  • squirrel6 3y ago
    During the process of replacing old processes with new ones, it’s hard to know what aspects of the traditional process (in this case, books and writing) are more valuable than understood. It seems like we are making a step in the right direction, but I wonder how we will prevent ourselves from making this and similar mistakes in the future.
    • xormapmap 3y ago
      > I wonder how we will prevent ourselves from making this and similar mistakes in the future Just listen to the teachers, parents, and students. In high school I was among the last year groups to be pen and paper. All the younger students had laptops and iPads. I distinctly remember during the change that very few people thought it was a good idea, except for those students who got a free laptop or iPad out of it. I imagine the change was mostly brought about by administrators and politicians.
      • ibizaman 3y ago
        Please, just listen to the teachers. They probably know best how to teach.
      • miguelazo 3y ago
        > I imagine the change was mostly brought about by administrators and politicians. They are a specific type of “influencer”. People who claim the crown of “innovation” simply by jumping on the hype train of whatever the new hot thing is. Many companies are falling into this trap with AI right now. They use FOMO to get leaders with weak wills and a lack of vision to jump on the hype train, forcing everyone else along for the ride.
• pier25 3y ago
  I worked in ed-tech for a couple of years. Handwriting is about developing fine motor control which plenty of research have shown is fundamental for developing cognitive skills. There are exceptions but generally technology rarely helps to learn better compared to pen and paper with a good teacher.
  • fnordpiglet 3y ago
    Personally I found soldering taught me fine motor control. But my family has genetically bad hand writing being a bunch of surgeons - who can’t write worth a damn but have super human fine motor control. I would note of the things you listed: pen, paper, good teacher, almost all the alpha is associated with the teacher. And while the pen and the paper can be bought, a good teacher is only born.
  • jcarrano 3y ago
    I have excellent fine motor control in both hands. I can use knives, a mouse, scissors or solder with either hand, yet I have struggled- suffered!- with handwriting since forever.
• jcpst 3y ago
  For me, writing on paper provides insights that I just don’t get from a computer. Writing outside the lines, doodles and swirls on the edges as I ruminate. Adding geometric borders around certain areas, arrows pointing at important things. Leaning in to add a tiny side-note… I still always program at work with paper and pen on one side of my keyboard. It’s a bit like a mental clipboard for me. It also gives me another reason to get my eyes off the screen for a bit.
  • edgyquant 3y ago
    I wonder what actually moving your hand to draw the characters does for the brain and associating the characters meaning. I definitely feel writing by hand is more intimate and it’s easier to think, but I’m a lot slower to write and my hand cramps often.
  • fnordpiglet 3y ago
    Interestingly I’ve never found writing helpful. I do better typing out my thoughts and writing samples etc. I’ve really tried because people who find writing useful have such great experiences. I even took copious notes in school because everyone said how useful it was. I never referred to them and eventually stopped and just paid close attention. I don’t whiteboard, I don’t jot down ideas, I am just able to keep things in cache and render them in documents, code, and diagrams. I think different minds work differently. My challenge with standardized learning models is they work for those they work for, and cut down and ground down those it doesn’t. Then the beneficiaries write the rules for the next generation oblivious to the possibility that their experience isn’t the only one. I really struggled in American public school which is rife with learning style assumptions. I really hope a time comes when neurodiversity is accepted in public education, but until then I’ll keep sending my daughter to a private school that adopts a differentiated teaching style.
  • brenns10 3y ago
    That's such a cool thing the way you describe it. I honestly wish I was that way. But for me, my most direct connection to expressing thought is a keyboard connected to a capable text editor. I remember trying to take notes by hand in college, and finding that it was easier for me to type in org-mode (mainly so I could write equations in latex, but not deal with latex outside of that). I've never been a person who doodles. I may underline or highlight, but that's about it. I keep trying hand journaling and handwritten note taking. I'm not particularly slow or sloppy, but it just doesn't click the same way as the keyboard. I guess the grass is always greener, isn't it?
• pbkrewind 3y ago
  There seems to be a very different way of thinking when the human interface device is a computer vs a pen and paper or a book. I can do some things behind a computer, but some kinds of thinking require me to be away from a computer. Oddly, the shower seems to be a place where I do some of my best thinking.
• one_level_deep2 3y ago
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• ungruntled 3y ago
  I can attribute a great deal of poor school results due to books and timed or take-home handwritten assignments. I had a 40lb backpack for school filled with books and notebooks and implements required for class. Forgot a book? Lose a mark. Random checks on note-taking during class. Forgot your notebook? Lose a mark. Protractor split due to the compression between two books? Lose a mark. I walked to school on many days. My back hurt permanently. I write with my left hand. Nobody knows how to teach this. Letters smear into the next. Ball point pens get jammed. Can’t read your handwriting? Lose a mark. Know exactly what you want to write but cant produce it in time? Lose a mark. Hand is cramped from P.E. from doing 30 pull-ups? Lose a mark. Its a pain to think faster than you can write as you watch the clock run out. When it started being possible to turn in typed assignments or timed tests, life became easier. Don’t do this to kids.
  • doubleg72 3y ago
    Sounds a bit dramatic, don’t ya think?
    • ungruntled 3y ago
      The effects were measurable. For instance, paragraphs within essays were crossed out as illegible and removed from the final marks. So for instance if you had to write a 5 paragraph essay, and 1 paragraph was missing due to this, then maximum grade would be a C+ due to missing a conclusion section or introduction or other required section.
  • dinkleberg 3y ago
    Wow, I haven't thought about the joy of carrying textbooks in ages. Those were the days.
  • lawn 3y ago
    Sounds like a teacher problem more than a book/handwriting problem to me. Also, you walked to school -many- days? Good to be you, as I walked to school every day throughout all my life, including to University.
• jillesvangurp 3y ago
  Writing is not moving a pen across paper but learning to wield language. It's been decades since I wrote anything more than a few scribbles using a pen. It's slow. It's clumsy. My hands cramp up. It's literally painful. I don't miss it, at all. Useless skill as far as I'm concerned. I grew up in the seventies and eighties so that was just the way things were done. But that's nearly 40-50 years ago. Doing that right now is backwards. Why teach people how to mess up their hands and wrists and then not teach then how to use a keyboard properly? Most writing that still matters gets done with those. It's faster, more efficient. A lot easier to produce lots of text. Which is actually a key thing when you are learning to write: you need to write a lot. Having tools tell you when you are getting your grammar and spelling wrong is super helpful. Having a teacher with a red pen is slow and inefficient. Fast feedback loops are great for learning. Getting corrected while you are writing is much better than days/weeks later when your poor overworked teacher gets around to dealing with your writing. In the same way, I use a kindle. Actual paper books are a relic of the past. I read more than before I had ebook readers. It's so much better. Why limit yourself to books that fit in the tiny little backpack of a kid when you can the whole world of books and the internet at your finger tips? School books are dreadful. You get locked into whatever the school and published deems successful. Some schools get that right but a lot of them just fall for the mediocre drivel that the education publishers shovel out. Modern schools should embrace technology, AI, and prepare kids for this century; not the last one.
  • galaxyLogic 3y ago
    Even though we have calculators, learning to multiply in your head is a valuable skill. Why because you can use it even when the power is down. Handwriting similarly. You can write even when there is no computer around, or when power is down. I also believe the argument that it enhances motoric-skills. And reading? Do we really need to learn reading when we can just ask Siri to read it out loud for us? Computer-skills of course are valuable too.
    • dotnet00 3y ago
      >Even though we have calculators, learning to multiply in your head is a valuable skill. Why because you can use it even when the power is down. This argument feels weak, how often does your phone or watch actually reach the point of shutting down due to a drained battery? Pretty much never for me, so I basically have a calculator on my wrist and in my pocket 24/7. Having basic multiplication and specific results/approximations committed to memory is valuable because it can be faster than pulling up a calculator (eg certain powers of 2 as a programmer), but for anything where being precise matters, manual multiplication has been essentially obsolete for me since finishing undergrad (despite being in a very math heavy field now). Outright being unable to write by hand is obviously a problem, as it's still possible to encounter a system that isn't digital a handful of times a year, but emphasizing quality as strongly as we used to should be mostly on the way out. We can read much faster than we can speak and there is no reasonable way to have a voice assistant read all the text one encounters daily that isn't on their own device, so there I'd argue that the latter is objectively inferior in every way unlike with writing or mental math, where both sides of the debate have good points.
• rhelz 3y ago
  I don't wish they'd bring back cursive; I wish they would teach shorthand. If I would have learned shorthand in the 2nd grade, it would have made every single class I took after that better, because I could have taken much better notes.
  • droopyEyelids 3y ago
    Do you know it now?
    • rhelz 3y ago
      I know Teeline shorthand, which is easier to learn than Gregg shorthand. It is fine for taking note from books or articles, but not quite fast enough to take notes from spoken language.
• nonethewiser 3y ago
  > As young children went back to school across Sweden last month, many of their teachers were putting a new emphasis on printed books, quiet reading time and handwriting practice and devoting less time to tablets, independent online research Children. Independent online “research.” Right.
• justbored123 3y ago
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• CamperBob2 3y ago
  Handwriting? Really? Must be nice to have so much classroom time available that they can afford to waste it teaching what amounts to a hobby.
• j7ake 3y ago
  I think one approach is to complement tech with its analog/mechanical equivalent. Have people play on a real piano but also complement with garage band. Use mechanical type writers alongside Microsoft word. Get kids to understand the origins of many of our digital tools.
  • deafpolygon 3y ago
    There's no point. Kids don't want to. If you want to get kids on board: Don't bring back the old things; make new things that are more tactile. Advance them in new ways. For example, instead of using iPads - invest in advanced e-ink tech to bring better digital books to schools. The piano example is an exception because, you can't really replace musical instruments. But mechanical type-writers? Why not just invest in better mechanical keyboards, rather than the cheap membrane ones you see in schools so much?
  • toastal 3y ago
    We should stop indoctrinating school children into proprietary software.
• DanielHB 3y ago
  One advantage of giving kids laptops for schoolwork is that we won't be training a generation that can't touch-type I am a bit serious here though, gone are the days where you were expected to learn computer skills at home. Most people don't use laptops all that much in the same manner millennials used to use desktops. So we are growing in a generation where people prefer to use touchpads instead of mouses and can't touch-type, hampering the productivity of these people unless they train themselves out of it. They have little reason to do so because it is not a 100% difference, more like a 5-30% difference depending on task Funnily enough there is an argument to be made that a lot of millennials and older can't swipe-type in touch devices which is also valid!
  • Moru 3y ago
    I'm usually looking at people when they type on keyboards. When I was young (1985) most people that had to type, knew how to touch type. Then came a phase where it was hunt and peck when the computers showed up and everyone had to use them for work. Later you were expected to at least know the finger position even though you look at the keyboard while typing. But I haven't had opportunity to see much people typing for a while until last year. Just last week I saw two people working at a bank not able to type numbers on the numpad without looking and using one finger. Both of them around 25. The optician could not touch type, was using a fast version of hunt and peck with three fingers total. Also around 25. But the dentists and doctors could touch-type pretty fast. All of them 40 - 60. (I started working as a personal assistant part time so see a lot of medical people, Sweden)
    • DanielHB 3y ago
      I am starting to see programmers intern/entry-level who can't touch type, less common for people with college degrees in IT though. Also in Sweden.
• Borrible 3y ago
  I remember a time when "grasping" something was a literal thing. Strangely enough, however, I only became aware of this when I studied Hegel.
• NalNezumi 3y ago
  While my own experience and bias would say this is a good thing, because it says "Sweden" I take it (and now my bias) with a grain of salt. Sweden perform quite significantly worse than the rest of the Nordic countries when it comes to school and things such as PISA scores. I do remember seeing in high school (2007 or so) on TV, how Sweden got a bad score and the education minister flat out denied the suggestions by pisa just to push through their political promises (smaller classes, which I think was mostly a politically motivated, to get teachers support) I think you should probably look to Finland, its much better neighbor, when it comes to school policies. Edit: apparently according to this article[1] the negative trend of declining scores have been reversed since 2016 so who knows, maybe this is a good thing [1] https://www.thelocal.se/20161206/what-swedens-improving-school-performance-tells-us-pisa https://www.thelocal.se/20161206/what-swedens-improving-scho...
  • asutekku 3y ago
    Finland has been falling in PISA scores and the general consensus seems to be the over reliance on tech in education. The current government has also set less tech in schools as one of their goals. So sure, look st finland since they are going to do the same thing
  • censor_me 3y ago
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• livrem 3y ago
  Swedish parent here. I have not seen any effect from this yet. Hopefully there will be some improvements in time for my youngest kid. A new year in school began last month, and for my oldest kids what "acquiring knowledge primarily from freely available digital sources that have not been vetted for accuracy" means in practice (and if anything, so far it has been worse this last month than ever before): Each child gets a Chromebook. They get assignments through Google Classroom. Typically the assignments are things like "here are 20 questions; find answers!" and they are more or less on their own Googling and reading Wikipedia to figure things out. I noticed for a few assignments they get lists of recommended reading as well, and sometimes links to youtube videos that are relevant. And links to some awful, ad-riddled, quiz-site, for practice, that at least one of the teachers like to link to. If I understand correctly some of the linked articles and videos are on some paywalled sites containing content specially made for school, so presumably there was some vetting there? When I had a brief look at some articles on subjects I happen to know a bit about I was not particularly impressed though. The printed books they used to have were WAY better. Not that I am sure things are automatically better on paper. I read 99% ebooks and prefer that to books. But what they get now is not anything like the same books, but digitally, unfortunately. And linking to ad-supported sites, in addition to all the Google-dependencies, makes it worse. On the positive side, my oldest son quickly figured out how to install Linux on his Chromebook to run games. I do not think they are allowed to do that, but I am not going to read the fine print to find out.
• cambaceres 3y ago
  As a Swede with toddlers (2 and 3 years old) in preschool I salute this. Preschools are required by law to use tablets in the "education" of toddlers, which is completely insane since more and more research are saying that using screens as a small child might disturb cognitive development. Call me old school but I think toddlers should play with sticks and balls. Side note: the general view in Sweden is that the school is working terrible and many parents do all they can to teach their young childs to read, write and count because they don't trust the school system to do that for them. I think it's great to teach your kids as much as you can, but it's a bit sad that the reason is this one.
  • farialima 3y ago
    > the general view in Sweden is that the school is working terrible It's quite universal to find that schools in your own country are terrible :) Having lived (and raised children) in multiple countries, I can tell you I've never seen a country where people would say good things about their own education systems Not sure why... probably simply because everybody has (good !) ideas on how it could be better, but they are not easy to implement ! :). Probably also because that's really something people care about
    • capr 3y ago
      probably because they're run by the state
  • drt5b7j 3y ago
    > Preschools are required by law to use tablets in the "education" of toddlers What the actual fuck.
    • sandos 3y ago
      Yes, my childrens preschool was awesome but at the same time I did wonder why the need for tablets at such a young age. One reason stated was that it was a matter of equality, parents who could not afford tech means their children are at a disadvantage later on when they dont know how to use... touchscreens I guess? :)
• pjmlp 3y ago
  They should come to Southern Europe, that is how most schools keep being, there is hardly any budget to have a couple of computers per school.
• _the_inflator 3y ago
  I like the decision, right move judging from what I read about cognitive development in childhood. On a side note, as a highly gifted person, I found it somewhat amusing and tragic how people tend to cast blame on a school system in general and not on individual cognitive difference in their respective children. Talking to parents, 90% believe their kids are above average in intelligence. Well, I have serious doubts. ;)
• noobermin 3y ago
  There is a lot of irony in the replies where most people here are in the business of shoving tech into every remaining open space in our lives whilst preaching it should actually not be part of a child's. I myself am a luddite quite honestly but I don't work in tech (directly) so it's odd for me seeing this sentiment so pervasive on a forum for tech workers.
  • drt5b7j 3y ago
    Is it irony? I think the anti-tech sentiment is more pervasive amongst the people that enable it precisely because those people understand the sausage.
• kristin407 3y ago
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• fennecfoxy 3y ago
  Handwriting is a good skill I suppose. But I think the value is more in writing down your ideas, thought processes, diagrams etc. I don't have a source but I remember reading _something_ about it being a legitimate thing; that it's easier for us to remember and understand something if we've physically had to write it down.