The return to more traditional ways of learning is a response to politicians and experts questioning whether Sweden’s hyper-digitalised approach to education, including the introduction of tablets in nursery schools, had led to a decline in basic skills.
I’m not saying digitalisation of schools are good or bad, but the privatisation of schools and extremely low quality of teachers education is responsible for these bad results.
In the article there is nothing about that. Could you elaborate?
I work for a school in Sweden. The school receives a lump sum of tax money for each student they admit each year. This causes the school to admit way more students than they can handle. The teachers are instructed to give students high grades and many just play along with this (one school even told the teachers their salary would be dependent on their students grades). Instead of spending this money on education or the school, most go to the owners who buy houses, cars, boats and more schools. The furniture comes from other private schools that were forced to close when the owners ran them into the ground. When this school is eventually also forced to close, the owners will move on to their next victim. That is only a matter of time.
Interestingly many owners of these “free schools” are current or former politicians involved in privatising the system. The same parties responsible are currently in power (only this time they are backed by the Swedish nazi party).
Using digital teaching tools (or doing anything on a computer) is not part of the teachers education and they receive no training in them. Very few of them can even create a PowerPoint on their own. Most just use downloaded material or YouTube to show in the classroom.
The damage done to our schools 30 years ago is beginning to show in workplaces and society more and more every year.
We have free schools in the UK too but they’re a more recent conservative innovation. So the disaster isn’t baring symptoms just yet.