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

https://undark.org/2026/04/01/sweden-schools-books/

Why Swedish Schools Are Bringing Back Books

Amid declining test scores, the country has pivoted away from screens and invested in back-to-basics school materials.

Undark Magazine

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 significance of these things is finally recognized now. Parents are also worried about the short video brain rot and psychological "capture" of our kids by social media companies.

Naturally, the kids should learn AI and AI workflows also. And personal AI assistants can probably help many kids in their studies. Learning AI should be its own subject but that should not ruin the way kids study other subjects where there are proven old ways to get to great results.

Source: I have 10 Finnish kids

Edit: FYI: an old (2018) link to an article about a finding about the matter: https://yle.fi/a/3-10514984 "Finland’s digital-based curriculum impedes learning, researcher finds"

Finland’s digital-based curriculum impedes learning, researcher finds

A Helsinki University researcher says Finland's current digital and 'phenomenon-based' learning methods used in schools may not be suitable for all students.

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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 don't think they need to learn 'AI workflows' (whatever that means). But I think it makes sense to use the LLM's as a resource.

I've used them when studying new languages (human languages not programming languages) and ML algorithms and they've been really useful.

Learning to check the citations it gives you is a useful skill too. I wish many adults were more sceptical about the things they are told.