Sweden's education minister has declared that he will stop the spread of digital devices in education and return to paper books. Digital learning for children under the age of 6 will be completely suspended. The reason for this declaration is that after the introduction of digital education, Swedish students' reading ability was greatly reduced. According to PIRLS, an international reading level assessment, the average reading score of fourth graders in Sweden in 2021 was 544, down 11 points from 555 in 2016. However, it is still high, with the 7th highest score in the world. In comparison, Singapore, which ranked first, improved its PIRLS reading score from 576 points to 587 points during the same period, while the UK's score fell only one point from 559 points in 2016 to 558 points in 2021. Sweden alone fell sharply, the report showed.
According to the Guardian in September, the average reading score of Swedish fourth graders in 2021 was 544, down 11 points from 555 in 2016. It may be the impact of the coronavirus pandemic or reflect the rise of non-Swedish immigrant students, but education experts have agreed that excessive use of screens during school classes could leave them behind in major subjects. On the other hand, a domestic education expert who confirmed this fact speculated, "The pandemic is the same situation as other countries, so it is classified as the difference between the places where private education is strong and the places where private education is weak."
In addition, private education in Singapore is higher than in Korea, and private education in the UK is more prevalent than in Sweden. In fact, Northern Europe, including Sweden, appears to be little affected by private education. As a result, it is true that there is no difference in scores in countries with strong private education, and the more public education-oriented countries, the greater the difference in scores. In recent years, Swedish schools have put a new emphasis on printed books, quiet reading time and handwriting practice while reducing the time spent using tablets, online searches and keyboards.
"There is clear scientific evidence that digital tools impede students' learning skills rather than improve them," the Swedish Medical University Institute said in a statement on its education digitization strategy. It also emphasized that "the focus should be on gaining knowledge through printed textbooks and the expertise of teachers, not from free digital sources whose accuracy has not been verified." UNESCO also recommended that digital technology be used appropriately for education in a report published in August. While urging schools to accelerate Internet access, they say that direct teacher-led education should never be replaced. An elementary school teacher in Stockholm, Sweden's capital, had students selectively use tablets in class before the survey. She uses tablets in math and some apps, but she doesn't use tablets to write text." And students under the age of 10 "needs time and practice on taking notes on paper before writing on a tablet."
In response to Sweden's declining fourth-grade reading performance, the Swedish government has announced a £685 million (£50 million) investment in school book purchases this year. In order to speed up the return of textbooks, an additional 5 million krona will be invested annually in 2024 and 2025. In fact, Korea has been supplying tablets with a considerable budget to increase the digital distribution of schools for several years, and some classes are in progress using tablets. This is a news that came as a bolt out of the blue for Korean education. Korea tends to think that it is a natural phenomenon to move on to learning digital devices such as tablets. However, the need to revise Korea's digital education policy has also been raised.
In particular, the Ministry of Education announced that it will first introduce AI textbooks to English, mathematics, information, and special education subjects in elementary, middle and high schools in 2025, and then expand them to subjects such as Korean language, social science, technology, and Korean history by 2028. On the other hand, considering the development stage and subject characteristics, it was announced that the elective subjects of elementary school and high school, examples, and morality will maintain book-type textbooks.
An official from the Ministry of Education explained that it reflected the expert opinion that it is too early to learn with digital devices for children whose communication is important in the developmental stage. The Ministry of Education also seems to be aware of the problems of digital devices to some extent. If the results shown in the above chart are substituted into Korea, students who maintain their scores in private education will receive high scores in achievement, and students who do not receive private education will have lower scores like Sweden, so in the end, the person between the rich and the poor will be more severely revealed.
In addition, the more digital devices become more popular, the more they rely on private education to maintain their grades. In the end, it means that students who do not receive private education can maintain academic achievement to some extent only when there is a amount of study with paper books in school education. If learning is maintained only with digital devices, the collapse of public education will accelerate. Assuming that the learning effect decreases due to the learning of digital devices, and that the educational effect is maintained only when more time is invested in private education.
The need to use the spread of tablets as a problem of digital literacy seems clear, but the effectiveness of public education can be maintained only when you secure time to learn with paper books. In order to achieve effective achievement for students, it must be a paper book. Sweden's news that studying paper books is more effective in maintenance and daycare centers shows that Korea also needs a new approach to enhancing educational effectiveness.
