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Sweden brings more books and handwriting practice back to its schools (2023)
- whalesalad 2y agoI have always preferred physical books to digital ones.
- _tariky 2y agoRight choice is to use e-ink tablets, not to switch back to text books.
- thrawa8387336 2y agoNah, try again. Producing that device, in Asia, is worse for the environment than whatever a tree here and there could.
- fullstop 2y agoThe books might be printed in Asia as well.
- pwillia7 2y agoThat depends on the number of books obviously
- lagrange77 2y agoAre e-ink displays especially bad for the environment, or are you talking about electronics in general?
- newsclues 2y agoChoice is an excellent option. Printed books and or electronic versions, seems like the best way to go for education.
- Ericson2314 2y agoReally sad the e-ink hasn't seen more widespread use. It's like no one wants a middle ground between tech-hype and tech-doom.
- spokaneplumb 2y ago[dead]
- silisili 2y agoI definitely agree that just giving kids a laptop/chromebook instead of books is not working. My own child and her friends just don't have the focus required, and easily get distracted out to email, group chats, everything else going on right next to the text. That said, one thing I appreciate is that she doesn't have to lug around 30lb backpacks like kids did when I was a child. We had lockers, but realistically they didn't provide adequate time to utilize them, so everyone just carried around all their books for the day. Most of us hunched forward because of the weight. It seems like something like a dumb ereader would be a good middle ground? Put all the textbooks into one place, but don't give it the ability to do anything but read? That or keep the textbooks in the classroom and share.
- jpcom 2y agoPhysical books are still better than e-readers because you can put sticky notes on the pages, jump back and forth between pages quickly, and even start to know where pages are simply based on how many leaves/pages are split between your left and right hand. Textbooks are basically reference books, my favorite dictionaries I start to "learn by hand" to know where to flip to approximately to start my search.
- throw5959 2y agoMy sister that's studying medicine says that her books would be totally ruined in half a year if she used them like she uses the virtual ones.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoHow does she use the virtual ones?
- niborbit 2y agolove this
- somethoughts 2y agoNot that this would be better but I'm surprised no ebook maker has had success in the educational market. Eink seems like it'd be great for education as it'd really only support text based distractions/bullying which while bad is less bad than the trifecta of video, images and text distractions/bullying. Its also lighter and the battery is longer lasting than a laptop.
- layer8 2y agoBeing able to flip through a physical book is so much better UX.
- MathMonkeyMan 2y agoI've noticed this with my Kobo ereader (which I love). If I want to go back a few pages, and then return to where I am now, it's a whole ordeal. The UX is there, but I have to learn it and remember it, and it's different for every device (not that I use many different devices). All physical books, miraculously, have the same UX. The parent post to yours makes me think that a large e-ink display would be useful in a school setting. Rather than carry around a backpack of enormous overpriced textbooks that we might use 30% of in a semester, just have one large ereader that you can use from 1st grade through your PhD. It's like a book, but lighter! And no internet, no games, no social media, no animations. No private enterprise capturing public education to sell schools a bunch of stupid shit. Just an improvement on a stack of textbooks, which schools or parents have always paid for. Might be nice.
- fullstop 2y agoMy daughter has a chromebook for school. As a device, it's actually pretty nice and the administration aspects of it are fantastic. It can be wiped and re-imaged easily, her "files" are all stored on the network, and it's snappy. Except for PDF viewing. When it comes to PDFs, it sometimes really struggles. I think that the device can handle them, but I'm pretty sure that the PDFs themselves are often a collection of scanned images and not text. Once she has more than a few tabs open, it takes longer and longer to switch between them and she ends up using a desktop to complete her work. In this case, the school provides the tools for her to do her assignments but we have the means to provide better ones at home and not every child will have this advantage. Personally, I can read data sheets all day on a monitor but I absolutely can not do the same with fiction. I either need a paper book or a Kindle, and I don't know why that is. Perhaps it's because I am looking ahead and not down?
- VyseofArcadia 2y agoKudos to Sweden for responding to research.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- NegatioN 2y agoI think books are the best medium for learning some things, and probably in some aspects for writing. However I'm worried some countries seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are many things that are easier to learn with computers/screens than without as well, they just need to fit the medium. [0] Intended as a reply, but the comment got deleted, so I might as well include it here: The article [0] is focused on homeschooling, so the exact points listed there doesn't necessarily have a leg up on traditional media (implying you're in the right environment to facilitate learning these skills well without computers, which I don't think most kids are). One off-hand example [where screens can be better than a book], would probably be using simulations to assist in learning physics, instead of just solving the equation on a page. Things where interactivity sets the learning in better context than a book probably would. I'm also very excited to try teaching our child math using apps like DragonBox, which seems to allow for much easier visualization of how to solve equations than I got at school. [1] 0: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2024-10-29-screen-time/ https://www.fast.ai/posts/2024-10-29-screen-time/ 1: https://dragonbox.com/products/algebra-5 https://dragonbox.com/products/algebra-5
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y agoPersonally, I would hate this. As a student I far preferred PDFs, etc. because I could quickly make Anki cards out of them, strip mine them for insights and good practice problems and then just burn them into my long term memory over the next few months. We should be teaching children about spaced repetition systems and helping them instill the one habit actually proven to help them remember what they learn, not banishing them back to the Carboniferous Era! EDIT: I'm getting downvoted, and I stand by what I said. :) Your kid's inability to focus should not be the reason my kid can no longer remember his material. That's a separate problem which can be solved with an approach as simple as "turn off the modem".
- pwillia7 2y agoNah -- the schools should teach to the average student and address the average problems. I don't begrudge the school system for not catering to me when I went through it.
- bluGill 2y agoSchools need to teach everyone basic skills for life in society. Whatever those are. In lower grades that is about the same for everyone, but as you move on schools need to push kids to where they will do well. I took metal shop in school, but I was always on the college track and so this was just a fun class I only took because I have one block that nothing else fit in - for all other kids in that class it was essential to their future life and they knew it.
- graemep 2y agoNo one is really average. Even people who are average overall are not average in every skill and every subject. /classroom This is an intrinsic problem with classroom teaching. There is an HN discussion about home education (or "homeschooling" as people misleadingly call it) at the moment...
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y agoThe average student shouldn't be expected to remember more than 5% of what they learn through school because teaching them to use a computer program for half an hour is too hard? That's bleak.
- impossiblefork 2y agoI didn't actually know we'd switched to computers. I knew there was a party, 'Liberalerna' that was for it, arguing for a kind of naïve general digitalisation etc. but I always assumed it was too crazy to be implemented, so I'm very happy with this.
- Haddocken 2y agoThere isn't a single source in that article.
- Animats 2y agoRight. This was announced back in 2023.[1] Somehow it showed up in India Defense Review recently. It's for preschoolers. The announced goal was to "completely end digital learning for children under age 6". [1] https://apnews.com/article/sweden-digital-education-backlash-reading-writing-1dd964c628f76361c43dbf3964f7dbf4 https://apnews.com/article/sweden-digital-education-backlash...
- dang 2y agoOK, we've changed the URL to that above. Thanks! Submitted URL was https://indiandefencereview.com/in-2009-sweden-chose-to-replace-books-with-computers-15-years-later-it-allocates-104-million-euros-to-reverse-course/ https://indiandefencereview.com/in-2009-sweden-chose-to-repl.... The same story (and even the same article text) shows up on a bunch of other sites too: https://www.google.com/search?q=Sweden%20is%20investing%20%E2%82%AC104M%20to%20bring%20back%20printed%20textbooks https://www.google.com/search?q=Sweden%20is%20investing%20%E.... Usually it's pretty easy to sift out the blogspam and find the original but I was at a loss in this case.
- throw0101c 2y agoIs cursive (hand) writing still taught? The province of Ontario brought it back in the curriculum for example: * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cursive-writing-ontario-1.6885628 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cursive-writing-ontar...
- bluGill 2y agoIt is a political thing as much as anything. Some old people feel they learned it so it must be good and therefore kids today must learn it. Same with "new math" - I didn't learn this way it must be wrong, go back to the way I was taught since I know math. At no point is anyone asking if the new way is better or not. Nor are we asking if maybe the skill is obsolete and not worth learning. Or maybe it is a niche skill that most won't need and we are better off spending time with something else (like going to the playground). There are probably other good points to debate as well, but generally it comes down to old people teaching what they learned. I do come down against teaching it. But then I never could read my own writing and am mad about all the trouble I got into in school for it (I have to credit the one teacher who did realize I wasn't lazy and tried to get experts to help me - but dysgraphia wouldn't exist for several more years so nothing came of his attempt). However I'm not clear if manual writing is obsolete for everyone or just me. Right note typing is a useful skill, but text to speech is making progress so maybe in a few years nobody will type and so teaching that skill was wasted. My school spent a lot of effort teaching me WordPerfect because that is what industry used. A complete waste of time that I never used again. Anyone care to guess what will be useful or not?
- dr_dshiv 2y agoTo support paper-digital integration, we created https://www.smartpaperapp.com/ https://www.smartpaperapp.com/ It’s not special paper—it’s just a computer vision system to help teacher easily convert student work on paper to digital marks. The state of Rajasthan in India uses this product to assess math and literacy for 5 million students each year. At a personal level, I’m frustrated by son’s school that uses a digital LMS to have teachers assign jpgs of pages of the books. I find it hard to help him because I don’t know what he has done and what he will do—something that a book makes natural. At the same time, I’m a fan of cognitive tutors and other digital instructional materials. Balance is good!
- dalke 2y agoMy eldest doesn't like the computers they have in grade 2 (in Sweden). He thinks the things installed on them are too boring and easy. He would rather read books. Thing is, the school doesn't have a staff librarian any more. As I understand it, they got rid of that position as part of the cost shifting to switch to digital.
- georgebcrawford 2y agoThis is so upsetting to hear. The librarians at my school are amazing. The students don't know how good they have it, but us teachers certainly do.
- dalke 2y agoI weep a little inside every time I pass the unstaffed school library.
- Agentlien 2y agoMy sister is a librarian in Sweden and used to work in schools. She was very upset by this. Fortunately, the government is backpedaling and bringing them back[1] 1: https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2024/06/nu-ska-alla-elever-fa-ratt-till-bemannade-skolbibliotek/ https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2024/06/nu-ska-al...
- Barrin92 2y agoApart from learning I'd also like to see more research into the effect switching to digital devices had on tactile skills. I used to mentor at a makerspace a few years ago and at least anecdotally, younger people seemed to have what we in Germany call "two left hands" (don't know if that's an English idiom too). At least to me it seemed like there's a real loss of fine motor skills. Digital devices are pretty impoverished interfaces. Even if I compare my own handwriting to my parents, who learned cursive more seriously and wrote more by hand I feel like my penmanship is just worse.
- bluGill 2y ago> I feel like my penmanship is just worse. You cannot learn everything. Is good penmanship worth spending time on? What are the other options. What if I gave you (8 year old you, your parents when you were 8, and you today - I want all 3 answers) a choice: you can learn cursive, piano, or go out to the playground. What is the best use of your time? My parents would have selected cursive, but on hindsight I can say it was a waste of my time. I always wished I could play piano (this is why I put piano in the list - there are millions of other options you can teach a 8 year old that we do not), but playground time is also valuable and would have appealed to me as a kid.
- Barrin92 2y agoSure fair enough, I wasn't trying to narrowly hone in on writing, if you want to make the case for more instrumental education I'm on board with that too. And someone recently actually asked me "where have all the high school bands gone?". It seems like (passive) digital entertainment is eating into all of these activities. I'm just broadly in favor of incorporating physical development, because who knows what it does to your brain if all you do is push buttons on a screen, as I said anecdotally I don't think anything good. The easy thing to writing about me is that you can basically incorporate it for free. People learning Kanji or math on paper, for one is likely better for retention but also even cheaper practically. As far as I can tell buying students tablets just cost a bunch of money.
- cyberax 2y ago> You cannot learn everything. Is good penmanship worth spending time on? There are some really good arguments that penmanship (actually, any fine motor skill) ultimately improves intellectual capacity.
- submeta 2y agoI went fully digital some years ago, gave away most of my printed books and bought ebooks only. Now I have my whole library in Calibre and on my Kindle. Why? Because I have my whole library with me. And I can download my highlights and process them. Into notes in Obsidian, that I can link to in my study notes. Recently I started buying paper based books again. Man, I missed holding physical books in my hands. And I start to regret having gotten rid of my physical library. There were so many memories I had with most of these books. I remember their covers, and instantly my emotions , thoughts, feelings are triggered. I don’t have these emotions when I think of my digital books. My spouse has books that she was gifted when she was a child. Still in our kids shelf. I cannot give her my digital books. I regret the decision having gone fully digital, which can only be a complement to physical books. Printed books are a physical experience. Something that allows me to attach thoughts, emotions, feelings to it. And they can become part of my life. Like a good friend.
- tikkabhuna 2y agoI'd love to have bundles where you can get the physical and ebook at the same time. Going on holiday it is ideal to have an ebook reader to carry many books, but, like you say, there is something precious about having books lined up on shelves to see them.
- mistahchris 2y agoYes! A physical book and ebook bundle would be awesome.
- mistahchris 2y agoI did the exact same thing. I'm back to buying real books, but I will say I still use my ereader in situations without good lighting or where the book is just too cumbersome. Sometimes that means I get the book twice which is suboptimal, but I strongly prefer the reading experience of a physical book. My appreciation of the work is even higher when the reading experience is better.
- graemep 2y agoI will not buy DRMed ebooks. I hate the idea that someone can delete a book I bought. Once I have a book, I want to keep it. I have quite a lot of books that belong to be grandfather, and lots that belonged to my parents. A lot of those will last another generation, maybe more. That does not happen with ebooks either.
- lillecarl 2y agoThis shows how thoughtful our politicians are, they're shooting from the hip at best. It's just dumb luck we haven't fucked up more than we have, and that we have natural resources to lean on (Iron, wood, water). Everything is over budget, nobody is accountable and psychological wellbeing is way down the drain.
- lillecarl 2y agoMy point being that politicians were going "ooh computers are good, let's slap a computer onto everything", but then only where they can bikeshed computers into the system as it seems easy at first (education). But without national guidelines to make it good, and no guidelines for medical IT and friends. It seems like Estonia "did computers right" more than Sweden.
- fn-mote 2y agoI'm unclear if this is a real article. It claims to be published in 2025 but it refers to 2022-2025 in the future tense. > [...] Sweden’s putting 104 million euros into bringing books back into classrooms from 2022 to 2025 See the comment identifying a legitimate source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42716448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42716448
- Suppafly 2y agoPlus 104 million euros seems like a normal amount of money to spend updating the curriculum for an entire country. This is likely just updating the curriculum over a few years from older books to newer ones and basically unrelated to the divide between laptops and printed books.
- lkramer 2y agoScandinavian countries went very hardcore digital for a while, giving all kids iPads and Laptops, and getting rid of all physical books. This sounds like a strong reversal, and I hope the other Scandinavian countries will learn some lessons from this.
- greekanalyst 2y agoPhysical reading/writing >> Digital reading/writing
- illwrks 2y agoI can't speak for everyone else, but in the same vein I've dusted off my old iPod as well... no distractions, popups or subscriptions - divine.
- MathMonkeyMan 2y agoI replaced the battery in my second hand first generation iPod maybe three times over ten years. Then for a number of years I used a late generation Zune that I got new at Walmart for a steal. Now I use Spotify on a smart phone, and it's a slow web app full of ads, delayed page reloads, unnecessary videos, and a buggy seek widget. The only controls are a touch screen. It is convenient to have my music player in the same device as... wait, all I wanted was a music player.
- torcete 2y agoI "discovered" libraries. They are cool! They usually offer more services than just books. But you have plenty of books that you don't need to keep after having read them, and the trip to the library is like a discovery journey. Even more, my library also has comics and comic books. These are usually quite expensive, and now I can just read them for free.
- SpaceToast 2y agoI recently learned that my library has 3D printers for anyone to use, and microfilm of local newspapers going back to 1797; it really is incredible what you can discover in them!
- duderific 2y agoOne interview question I like to give for software engineering candidates at my company is "rough out the model for an online library, where users can check out up to three books, they will be charged for overdue books" etc. Recently I had a candidate who essentially had no idea what I was talking about. They had never checked out a book from a library. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but I still was.
- eesmith 2y agoIf a candidate comments that libraries are getting rid of overdue fines as research has found it's not effective at getting books back in time, while negatively affecting their poorest members, and that libraries which got rid of fines found it "has raised circulation numbers, brought lapsed users back to the library, and boosted goodwill" (quoting https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/the-end-of-fines https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/the-end-of-fines ) - would that improve or worsen their changes of employment with you? Are you looking for someone who will follow orders, or looking for someone who will challenge them? I suspect no one has brought it up, but wonder if any have decided to not bring it up for worry that a challenge would risk their chance of being hired.
- duderific 2y ago
- skirge 2y agoI read a lot of books while being at primary and secondary school and most of my colleagues didn't, they had other things to do. Now I read on Kindle and others watch Netflix or scroll Facebook. Form of the book is not a root cause of the problem.
- paulg2222 2y ago[dead]
- AcerbicZero 2y agoI'm 95% sure my college would have just handed me a degree after the first quarter if they'd let me type my essays instead of writing them by hand.
- willy_k 2y agoAs a college student who writes digital essays but was not handed a degree my first semester, I’m curious what you mean?
- AcerbicZero 2y agoI mean that when I went to college 15 years ago, they made you hand write your essays; I have bad hand writing + I am a lazy writer + I'm in school for computers == poor marks. If I'd typed by essays, they would have been such academic works as to immediately grant me the degree. (Hyperbole for humor)
- battkajs 2y agoThis comment was responding to the original link
- miltonlost 2y agoYou think the Associated Press and its website is AI? The Associated Press that has been in existence for decades? The article does have sources in it, AND links to the website you link to! Your writing style is also very LLMy... I think you're AI, and not hiding it well.
- battkajs 2y agoI was replying to the original link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42716448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42716448 And I am not a native English speaker hence my language is AI-ish from my translation tools
- ddingus 2y agoGood. Tactile thinking remains quite useful and having the basic motor skills translates into manufacturing, the arts, and more of life than many may realize. Early in my life, I began to "calibrate" my perception. I call it the "eyecrometer" Today, I can call out sizes, distances, speeds, feeds and more to fairly high accuracy a majority of the time. It has paid off in manufacturing and prototyping more times than I can count. This all starts with the basics: Read it, hear it, see it, feel it, do it, say it. A younger coworker has began a similar journey. And they just started a robotics group on it too. Be digital. It helps. It has power, but don't trade your potential for the love of trees. Augment said potential instead.
- shw1n 2y agoOne belief I have is that a major lifehack in a digital world is making things as physical as possible. Spend all day at a computer? Get a mechanical keyboard so every keystroke is satisfying. Learn keyboard shortcuts so you're on the mouse less. Find yourself frequently turning something on/off via your phone? Get a physical button and map it -- e.g. physical volume knob Gotta mock something up or understand a codebase? Physical draw it in a notebook Got a dense book to read? Buy the print copy and go somewhere without a phone Obviously costs more money and space, but anything I can offload to a 'spatial' part of my brain is welcome these days
- hintymad 2y agoSpeaking of school, I find it disturbing that many schools switch to pure digital, i-ready and that some similar shit. The problem with pure digital is that the kids won't learn how to communicate math, like writing down step-by-step solutions to word problems in elementary schools, rigorous geometry proofs in grade 7, and algebraic derivations and proofs after grade 7. Those kind of work was natural to my generation when we grew up - it's just what our teachers trained us to do. And now it's a uphill battle to help my kids even understand the importance of doing proper maths. A general theme, though, is that I don't get why it's so hard for Americans to stick to the traditional but good practices, like getting rigorous training in STEM, like not solely relying on multiple choices, like hiring good teachers and firing bad ones, etc and etc.
- duderific 2y agoThe school districts have all kinds of conflicting incentives and priorities. Someone is telling them "go digital, it's the future! Kids have to learn to use technology!" Now folks are telling them "but the kids don't learn well with laptops! Go back to books!" So are they going to abandon the sizable investment they made in getting every kid a Chromebook? > like hiring good teachers and firing bad ones There are these things called unions...
- cryptonector 2y agoOk, but huge textbooks with lots of ink colors and lots of diagrams that make them heavy, hard to carry, hard to read and use, and expensive? Or textbooks like they used to be back in the 60s?
- euroderf 2y agoMakes me wonder. Can't they make book pages out of thin, thin plastic now ? Lighter to carry ? Maybe annotatable (and erasable too) ?
- kragen 2y agoYes, it's called "stone paper" or sometimes "rich mineral paper". It's a resin (typically high-density polyethylene) that's filled with, typically, calcite, with very high filler loadings up to 80%, then coated to provide the writing surface: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370899755_Biodegradable_Stone_Paper_as_a_Sustainable_Alternative_to_Traditional_Paper_A_Review?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6Il9kaXJlY3QiLCJwYWdlIjoiX2RpcmVjdCJ9fQ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370899755_Biodegrad... https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/117675/Life%20Cycle%20Assessment%20of%20Stone%20Paper-%20DO_NOT_UPLOAD_YET.pdf?sequence=1 https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/1176... This is causing problems in Australia (where the product is widely used) because confused people put the "stone paper" in the paper recycling, falsely believing it to be paper. If you wanted to minimize the thickness, you'd probably want to change the formula in several ways: - use a higher-strength plastic like polyimide; - include some kind of high-strength fibrous, acicular, or platy reinforcing filler; - use a more powerful opacifier than calcite, such as rutile, enabling you to use a lower filler loading and thinner layers. Talc, mullite, fiberglass, and bentonite come to mind as candidate reinforcing fillers, and rutile microcrystals can also be grown in an acicular morphology. If you really wanted to minimize the thickness and weight, maybe there's some way you could use metal instead of plastic.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago(2023) Some discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37479472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37479472
- eviks 2y agoHopefully this is only a temporary setback for the backs of the little fellas lugging dead trees around
- amai 2y agoe-ink tablets with a digital pen would be a good compromise. Kids don't need to carry heavy books, but they should still learn to write using a pen. Clicking and typing simply doesn't give enough tactile feedback for learning.
- eleveriven 2y agoI think that in any field (especially in education) a balanced approach needs to be applied to every aspect. And I think this move is a way to strike a balance
- avidphantasm 2y agoMy first grader has a pretty nice Dell 2-in-1 from school (with 8GB of RAM!!!). She had a school-provided iPad in kindergarten. I don’t think either of these things did her any good educationally (except making sure every kid has a device to do remote learning, which thankfully they haven’t had to do yet). I really think schools should follow the model I had when growing up in the 80s and 90s: use non-internet connected devices once or twice per week in a computer lab until high school.
- alganet 2y agoThe popularization of handwriting is, so far, one of our finest achievements. We take it for granted. To me, handwriting is a skill on par with playing a musical instrument. Very fine motor movement, mind and body, years of practice. It's a miracle we made everyone do it. So much depends on humanity keeping this flame alive.
- ben7799 2y agoOne aspect to this IMO is the difference in maturity between pencils and paper + books and chromebooks/ipads with software. Pencil/Paper/Book is extremely mature and the teaching system knows how to use it extremely well. The tools just work and don't distract from learning. My kid has a Chromebook + Google classroom and it's just a distracting mess of poor hardware and horrific software. Just bad all around the teachers even say it wastes a ton of their time. Anyone working in tech has a skewed view because we always have excellent hardware and software because of the amount of money the industry has and the way the industry knows that spending on tools pays back in a huge way. None of that applies to schools. It blows me away that my son got a 2024 Chromebook and the screen is about what I had on my work laptop 20 years ago. But 20 years ago all the software was designed to work on a screen that was sub-1080p, today all the Google software seems to be designed for a 27" 4k screen.