In Swedish classrooms, the noise that the government wants to bring back to the foreground resembles that of a few decades ago: pages being flipped, pencils scratching the paper, pens held badly in children’s hands. Since 2023, Stockholm has chosen a very clear line: in the first classes, reading, writing and arithmetic return to the center, with pen and paper instead of the continuous reflection of the displays. This course correction includes the return of physical books, handwriting, the idea of schools without cell phones throughout the day, national primary tests reported in analogue format and a tightening also in kindergartens, where traditional instruments are favored for the little ones.
The economic part makes the turning point even more concrete. For manuals and teacher guides, the Swedish government has allocated 685 million crowns in 2023, i.e. just over 63 million euros at mid-April 2026 exchange rates. The official line aims for a paper textbook for every student and for every subject. To that fund was added 176 million crowns in 2024 for fiction and non-fiction in schools and nursery schools, then 480 million in 2025. In the meantime, more money has arrived for school libraries with dedicated staff and to make the future crackdown on telephones operational. In a country of just over ten and a half million inhabitants, such figures have a very visible political weight.
The Swedish turning point was born from a years-long course correction
The reason for the backtracking lies in a malaise that has been dragging on in Sweden for some time. Researcher Linda Fälth, who works on teacher training at Linnaeus University, explained that the reinvestment in physical texts and the reduction of emphasis on devices came after growing doubts about the scientific solidity of school digitalisation. A broader cultural review has spread around that doubt: screen time, distraction, loss of deep reading, difficulty maintaining attention, increasingly fragile handwriting. The idea behind the reform is linear: basic skills must be consolidated early, and physical books are perceived as a more suitable support for doing so.
The scholastic results acted as an accelerator. In PISA 2022 data, Sweden lost ground compared to 2018 in mathematics and reading, returning close to 2012 levels, which for those two areas were the lowest observed. The precise relationship between digitalisation and decline in learning remains difficult to isolate, however some research continues to see an advantage in reading on paper, especially when compared to expository texts, those which explain, describe, organize information and require a more disciplined cognitive effort compared to narrative texts. At the same time, the OECD, in the diagnostic report published in 2026 at the request of the Swedish government, paints a less ideological and more angular picture: in Sweden students use digital resources to learn more than their peers in many other OECD countries; moderate use may be associated with better outcomes, while abuse, improper use and heavy consumption for leisure during school hours are linked to worse outcomes. The Swedish line, in short, resembles a more severe delimitation of the times and ages of use, much more than a total expulsion of digital.
The government, moreover, says it openly: digital tools have a place when they really help learning, and digital competence remains an objective, especially in the higher classes. The difference lies in the order of priorities. First comes solid reading, legible writing, concentration, calculation. Then comes the rest. It’s a sequence that seems elementary, yet in many school systems it had been reversed with almost automatic certainty.
In the United States the trajectory runs in the opposite direction
In the United States the landscape remains very different. A survey by the EdWeek Research Center showed that already in March 2021, 90% of district managers provided a device to every middle and high school student, while in elementary schools the share exceeded 80%. The movement comes from afar: since the 1980s the technological industry has pushed schools towards the computer as a symbol of modernization; then the internet, laptops, tablets and platforms have redesigned the way of being in the classroom. A part of the educational world continues to see real advantages in this path: more interactive lessons, more accessible materials, more personalized paths.
Now yet another promise is knocking on the table, that of AI literacy. Google just launched a program to offer free AI training to 6 million U.S. educators. OpenAI presented an initiative aimed at governments and educational systems to bring AI tools, research and training into schools and universities. Microsoft, in testimony to the US Congress, indicated AI literacy as one of the areas where teachers are asking for more support. In the meantime, change has already entered the daily lives of students: according to Pew, 54% of American teenagers have used AI chatbots to get help with their homework.
Here the contrast with Sweden becomes almost physical. Another EdWeek survey reported that 30% of educators see students spending at least half of their classroom reading time in front of a screen. The scientific literature, meanwhile, continues to point out critical issues: digital reading may require more mental effort, especially in younger people, and heavy use of devices is associated with poorer understanding, less stable memory and visual fatigue. During the pandemic, with online learning becoming routine, these cracks have become much more visible. An American literacy consultant summed up the issue bluntly: technology serves as a tool, the work of teaching remains elsewhere.
In the American debate the tone has become harsh. Jonathan Haidt described the choice to fill the desks with computers and tablets as one of the most expensive decisions the school has made in its recent history. Bloomberg estimated 2024 U.S. spending on educational technology at around $30 billion, about ten times as much as textbooks. Jared Cooney Horvath, neuroscientist and teacher, wrote to the Senate that in the last two decades the cognitive development of children, in many developed countries, has stopped and in several areas has reversed course; in the same hearing he argued that devices now occupy an enormous share of attention, education and tasks.
Money also weighs heavily in this area. Naomi Baron, an American linguist, observes that in the United States publishers have pushed hard towards digital for economic reasons and that many educators know little about the amount of studies already available on the comparison between paper and screen. Meanwhile, some groups of parents are learning to opt out of school laptops and bring their children back to books, notebooks, pencils and pens. Teachers are also viewing the abuse of AI with increasing caution.
The widespread feeling is that the topic no longer concerns innovation in the abstract. It’s about dosage, pacing, the right age, the line between support and invasion. For years the Swedish school had been described as a digital avant-garde. Now his course correction weighs far beyond the Nordic borders, because it touches on a simple and terribly concrete question: how much technology really supports basic learning?
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