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

In 2023, the Swedish government announced that the country’s schools would be going back to basics, emphasizing skills such as reading and writing, particularly in early grades. After mostly being sidelined, physical books are now being reintroduced into classrooms, and students are learning to write the old-fashioned way: by hand, with a pencil or pen, on sheets of paper. The Swedish government also plans to make schools cellphone-free throughout the country.

Educational authorities have been investing heavily. Last year alone, the education ministry allocated $83 million to purchase textbooks and teachers’ guides. In a country with about 11 million people, the aim is for every student to have a physical textbook for each subject. The government also put $54 million towards the purchase of fiction and non-fiction books for students.

These moves represent a dramatic pivot from previous decades, during which Sweden — and many other nations — moving away from physical books in favor of tablets and digital resources in an effort to prepare students for life in an online world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Nordic country’s efforts have sparked a debate on the role of digital technology in education, one that extends well beyond the country’s borders. U.S. parents in districts that have adopted digital technology to a great extent may be wondering if educators will reverse course, too.

So why did Sweden pivot? In an email to Undark, Linda Fälth, a researcher in teacher education at Linnaeus University, wrote that the “decision to reinvest in physical textbooks and reduce the emphasis on digital devices” was prompted by several factors, including questions around whether the digitalization of classrooms had been evidence-based. “There was also a broader cultural reassessment,” Fälth wrote. “Sweden had positioned itself as a frontrunner in digital education, but over time concerns emerged about screen time, distraction, reduced deep reading, and the erosion of foundational skills such as sustained attention and handwriting.”

Fälth noted that proponents of reform believe that “basic skills — especially reading, writing, and numeracy — must be firmly established first, and that physical textbooks are often better suited for that purpose.”

Between 2000 and 2012, Swedish students’ scores on standardized tests steadily declined in reading, math, and science. Though they recovered ground between 2012 and 2018, those scores had dropped again by 2022.

Though it’s unclear precisely how much of the decline is due to digitization, there is some evidence that analog teaching materials for reading may be superior to screen learning. However, this applies to expository as opposed to narrative texts. Narrative texts tell a story, whether fiction or non-fiction, while expository texts are designed to inform, describe, or explain a topic in a logical, factual manner.

Swedish officials emphasize that digital technology isn’t being removed from schools altogether. Rather, digital aids “should only be introduced in teaching at an age when they encourage, rather than hinder, pupils’ learning.” Achieving digital competence remains an important objective, particularly in higher grades.

Historically, the technology industry has pushed for more use of digital learning, seeing itself as a transformer of education. In the 1980s, Apple helped bring about the use of computers in schools. Then, starting with the use of the internet, and later integrating mobile devices, technology reshaped the educational landscape. Education experts suggest it can foster a learning experience that is more interactive, accessible, and tailored to the needs of individual students.

In the U.S., the trend nationally in recent years has been toward the use of increasingly sophisticated methods of digital learning, such as providing children with laptops or devices like the iPad. According to a survey conducted by the EdWeek Research Center, part of the trade publication Education Week, 90 percent of school district leaders were providing devices for every middle and high school student as of March 2021. More than 80 percent of school district leaders said the same was true for elementary school students.

And now, technology giants such as Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are urging schools to teach literacy in artificial intelligence. It’s believed by some working in education that schools ought to prepare pupils for employers who expect digital fluency. This may indeed be pertinent in the age of AI. More than 50 percent of teens in America have used AI chatbots for schoolwork, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

According to a 2023 survey, 30 percent of educators said their students spend at least half of their classroom reading time doing so digitally. But this may have drawbacks. Researchers suggest that reading on digital displays instead of paper may be more demanding mentally, especially for younger students. Studies have linked heavy digital use to reduced comprehension and memory retention as well as eye strain.

The limitations of educational technology became apparent during the Covid-19 pandemic. When online learning became the norm, experts began questioning whether technology’s promises had materialized. In a post on LinkedIn, Pam Kastner, a literacy consultant and adjunct professor at Mount Saint Joseph University, suggests: “Technology is a tool, not a teacher.” She views the cognitive architecture for reading as being built for print.

A well-known critic of the use of smartphones and social media by children, Jonathan Haidt, posted in February: “Putting computers and tablets on students desks in K-12 may turn out to be among the costliest mistakes in the history of education”.

The U.S. spent $30 billion in 2024 on laptops and tablets and other educational technology, 10 times more than on textbooks. Neuroscientist and educator Jared Cooney Horvath has lamented the heavy use of digital devices in education. He has said that Gen Z, persons born roughly between 1997 and 2012 and known for growing up with digital technology as an integral part of their lives, is the first generation in modern history to score lower on cognitive measures than the previous one. In January of this year, he told a Senate committee that this has resulted in a generation of children who are less cognitively capable than their parents.

Whether the U.S. will follow Sweden’s path remains to be seen. Naomi Baron, a professor emerita of linguistics at American University, told Undark she doesn’t see the U.S. turning to Sweden for advice. This is in part because of financial incentives: “First, commercial textbook publishers have been pushing digital materials — heavily for financial reasons generally ignoring the research comparing comprehension, etc. with print vs. digital reading.” Baron also wrote that “American educators themselves are generally unaware of the now substantial research literature here, and instead focus on saving their students (or school districts) money.” Still, some American educators appear to be aware that digital technology might be making education worse. Teachers seem especially concerned about the possible detrimental effects of overuse of AI.

At the same time, some American parents have recently started forming networks, teaching one another how to opt out of school-issued laptops and devices and back into physical textbooks, along with a reversion to pen or pencil and paper. Parents point to evidence showing better information retention when pupils read it on paper. This reaction may reflect a growing backlash to digital technology in education, driven by concerns about possibly excessive screen time and potential harms to youth, including possibly addictive distractions.

If U.S. educational leaders were to consult their Swedish colleagues, the advice they’d likely get is not to remove digital technology whole cloth. “The goal is recalibration rather than reversal,” wrote Fälth. This was echoed in a statement sent to Undark by the Swedish Ministry of Education and Research: The “Swedish government believes that digitalization is fundamentally important and beneficial, but the use of digital tools in schools must be carried out carefully and thoughtfully.”

In other words, the objective is not to reject digitalization. It’s more nuanced than that. The goal is to judiciously establish boundaries around technology’s selective and sequential use over stages of a pupil’s educational development. This means introducing digital technology at later ages after basic reading and other skills have been achieved.