Nordic Delusions: Scandinavia Bids Farewell to 'Excessive Digitalisation', but at least Students are Showering more Often (Part 3)

A three-part series on drastic changes in Nordic education, courtesy of massive setbacks in the OECD's standardised PISA scores

Prelim: this is the third instalment of a three-part series on how digitisation has negatively impacted education on all (primary, secondary, and tertiary) levels, as evidenced by Sweden, Finland, and Norway vowing to ‘reduce screen time’ in schools to improve learning outcomes.

Originally written for TKP.at, you may find the three articles (in German) here, here, and here. I’ve edited these pieces for readability and updated content where necessary. For the English-language version of parts 1 and 2, click on the below links:

Nordic Delusions: Education Levels Dovetail Due to 'Excessive Digitalisation' (Part 1)

Nordic Delusions: 'Excessive Digitalisation' to Bring Nat'l Cell Phone Bans and Less Screen Time (Part 2)

Why, if you’re asking yourself, am I making this content available here? Well, as the proud father of two primary schoolers I experience the ensuing maddening, mind-numbing, and soul-crushing discussions about ‘screen time’ literally everyday. Here’s hoping that these three pieces will help parents and concerned citizens alike who fight the good fight vs. digitalisation, screen time, and the seemingly unceasing (unshakeable) belief in the inherent ‘goodness’ and ‘virtue’ of ever more digitisation.

Note that the point of departure here is a small pseudo-libertarian party in Austria (NEOS, whose platform is best described as ‘socially liberal’—read: woke—and economically ‘hardcore neoliberal’) and its musings about what to do with (to) education as it currently exists.

As always, translations and emphases mine; all postings are ‘too long for email’; please read them online or via the app.

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The End of an Illusion: Scandinavia to Reduce Digitalisation in Schools

By Stephan Sander Faes, TKP.at, originally pub. 5 Jan. 2024 [source]

In spring 2023, the Swedish government announced that it would reduce digitalisation in schools, which ‘upset’ some. As is so often the case, the Norwegian government followed suit last fall and came to similar conclusions. Now another piece recently appeared about the third ‘pioneer’ in terms of digitalisation, Finland, where education also is in shambles.

In many respects, Scandinavia is considered a kind of extremely progressive' role model for many issues that politicians, ‘experts™’, and legacy media complain about in Central Europe. In many cases, however, the realities are quite ‘different’ from those distant imaginations, and so ‘fact-finding’ missions such as the one carried out by a group of the Austrian small party NEOS (financed by Austrian oligarch Hans-Peter Haselsteiner) last year typically result in extremely contradictory and useless ‘lessons learned’ (I wrote about this in part 1 of this series).

Norway’s PISA Failure

At the beginning of December 2023, state broadcaster NRK reported in detail on the results of the PISA study from the previous year. The results in brief: since Norway's first participation in the series of tests organised by the OECD (which took place in 2003), ‘results have never been so bad’:

Norwegian girls have become worse in mathematics…Norwegian 15-year-olds are also doing worse in reading and science and are almost at the same level as in previous years.

Education and Science Minister Kari Nessa Nordtun (Labour Party) commented on these results as follows:

‘I am particularly concerned about the sharp decline [of skills] of students at the lowest level’…the data are serious precisely because they are in line with several other studies [i.e., this is not an isolated incident]. Norwegian children read less and, among other things, have a poorer understanding of democracy’, she says.

The researchers behind the report have no explanation for the decline, but point to the pandemic and corona measures as a possible cause [oh, what happened in schools? Right: ‘remote learning’ via digital devices].

Nordtun himself points to, among other things, screen time: ‘Many students are less motivated for school. Digitalisation has changed our reading habits and the use of screens has probably affected both concentration and attention.’

The report is exciting simply because many ‘side effects’ of ‘digitalisation’ and their ‘interactions’ with the Covid mandates are relatively clearly addressed. Tenth grader Aron Håheim, for example, makes the following comment: ‘I am the Covid cub. I was at home for three months. Then I didn’t get help for anything, which probably caused many to fall behind in both math and reading.’ [sure, blame someone else first, but the problem of ‘remote learning’ while parents are ‘remotely working’ is obvious]

By the way, the PISA study is quite controversial in Norway, and for years the Centre Party and the Socialist Left (Sosialistisk Venstreparti , SV) have been calling for Norway’s withdrawal from it. Prime Minister Støre's Labour Party, though, remains in favour of Norwegian participation.

Part of the criticism of the PISA study is that it does not distinguish between municipal and county or district levels and therefore provides little constructive information that can be used to improve school education [which is also true elsewhere].

The Report of the Norwegian ‘Screen Time Commission’

The government is trying to deal with this through evidence-based rules and, following developments in neighbouring Sweden, has commissioned a screen time commission (orig. Skjermbrukutvalget ) to develop recommendations (this was discussed in part 2 of this series).

Below I present the main findings and recommendations of the first part of the report, the final version of which is expected in autumn 2024.

Screen time in Norwegian schools has increased in a relatively short period of time. Most students have their own digital device and digital teaching aids are widely used in schools. The research shows that students tend to work alone more often and that in classrooms where digital devices are used, there is less teaching for the entire class. We know too little about the impact of increased individual work on student learning and well-being, but we can still assume that it is a form of work that can be demotivating for some…

However, digital devices have some characteristics that can disrupt students' learning and affect their ability to concentrate and pay attention. Therefore, it is necessary to think about how digital devices should be used in the classroom and when it makes more sense to use pen and paper .

The information about reading practices and skills is particularly clear:

Research shows that reading comprehension is better when we read on paper, among other things, esp. when students are expected to absorb coherent informational texts. When we read on a screen, we tend to read more superficially and not concentrate as much as when reading on paper…

Reading longer coherent texts is particularly important for developing good reading skills but also for developing cognitive skills such as critical thinking. For those who can read well, the choice of screen or paper seems to play a minor role. Students with low reading skills benefit less from reading on screen…

As we read more on screens, research suggests that students should read more on paper.

I can only support this from my own teaching experience at Norwegian universities. As the father of two elementary school students, I would also like to point out the huge problems that, in my opinion, we have here in the first seven (!) grades due to comprehensive schooling: everyone is ‘equal’, meaning that in this country you are always waiting for the weakest person; there are different ability groups (which appears clearly in the report) and massive discrepancies between the students within the individual classes. However, recognition of ‘better’ or ‘more capable’ students does not take place, as this would obviously contradict the country’s para-socialist ethos too much. Everyone gets the same medals for participating, though.

When it comes to writing, there are mixed opinions on the question of whether children should learn to write by hand or on the keyboard. Handwriting can improve children's fine motor and cognitive skills [this has been proven], but typing on a keyboard can also be motivating for some students [this is a different matter]. Studies comparing handwriting to a keyboard in beginner's education have found no difference in the development of students' writing skills. Thus, both handwriting and keyboards can contribute to the development of students' writing skills.

This is, of course, nonsense. Writing in the traditional cursive font is not taught in this country, the handwritten notes of adults at universities are, to put it mildly, certainly not a feast for the eyes (and I say this as a historian with extensive experience in reading pre-modern source texts, primarily in Renaissance Latin/Italian or early modern administrative German). Here too, it is important to remember that the differences between those who are ‘good’ or ‘better’ and those who are ‘bad’ or ‘worse’ are even more accentuated by increased digitalisation.

At least the authors of this report are relatively honest when it comes to the consequences of current digitalisation mania:

The studies did not examine the development of writing skills over time and the impact on students' cognitive abilities. For older students, AI and predictive writing can affect students' writing skills, especially in secondary and upper secondary education [(senior) high school]. The digitalisation of society and the development of AI may also have an influence on what writing skills we will need in the future. There are currently more questions than answers here.

Here is an ‘anecdote’ from my professional field: in the fall we discussed at the University in Bergen how we should deal with ‘AI’ (especially ChatGPT or similar): apart from me, only one older colleague was of the opinion that the solution is actually quite ‘simple’: no more digital written exams and more in-person oral exams. As day follows night, we remained in the clear minority as our other colleagues pointed out the ‘not inconsiderable additional efforts’ arising from grading handwritten exams and decided to wait for national guidelines. (I myself have decided never to use digital tools such as PowerPoint again.)

Speaking of anecdotal evidence—rounding off this section are a few lines about mobile phones in Norway’s schools:

The use of mobile phones in school can be a tool for learning, but can also be disruptive and therefore lead to lower learning outcomes for students…Mobile phone rules [are] widely used in the classroom and during breaks in Norwegian schools to varying degrees. The effects of mobile phone rules in schools have not yet been sufficiently researched and it is therefore difficult to draw conclusions about how the rules work. From the available studies it can be concluded that strict cell phone rules can have a positive effect on both academic performance and bullying at school. This particularly affects some groups of students, especially girls and low-performing students. At the same time, a complete ban in the classroom can be counterproductive as it can be difficult to enforce, especially among older students .

This is—unfortunately—a problem that is also very widespread at universities and in professional life. However, this cannot be solved in one fell swoop, as the report also states:

The introduction of national mobile phone rules will not necessarily lead to significant improvements in student outcomes, particularly in schools where informal rules on mobile phone use already apply.

This is obviously the case, and ‘four out of five schools’ in Norway have already introduced complete or partial cell phone bans in 2019. However, one consequence of these bans that clearly points in the right direction is already apparent: As Aftenposten reported at the end of December 2023, ‘more students have been using the shower after sports’ since then—instead of immediately sweating and smelling and using their cell phones, which is a clear win for decency and, yes, ‘public health’.

At this point we leave Norway for the moment and turn to yet another Nordic country.

Finland also Faces the Fall-Out of its Digitalisation Push

As the Helsinki Times, among others, promptly reported , the situation is hardly different in Finland: Finnish youth have ‘deteriorated across the three core subjects examined in the international assessment: science, reading and mathematics’. As the Ministry of Education and Culture announced on 5 Dec. 2024, ‘Finnish 15-year-olds saw their mean score in mathematical literacy – the main focus of the latest assessment – decline by 23 points from 2018 to 484 points’. While this remains ‘12 points higher than the mean score of pupils across the OECD’, alarm bells are also ringing in Finland.

The Ministry of Education and Culture characterised the overall situation as ‘extremely disconcerting’…it also pointed out that although the performance of students with and without a migrant background fell in all three core subjects, the decline was faster for students without a migrant background in mathematics and science, which narrowed the gap between the two groups of students.

One positive takeaway from the latest results is that pupils exhibited less anxiety about mathematics in Finland than anywhere else in the OECD.

No one could explain exactly where this ‘fear’ of mathematics came from (perhaps because we use ‘Arabic’ numbers—which originally come from India?), but as in Sweden and Norway, the Finns face virtually indentical issues:

Finnish pupils were particularly concerned about the use of digital devices, with 41% estimating that digital devices have distracted them during every or most maths lessons…

Minister of Education Anna-Maja Henriksson (SFP) reminded that the pandemic and its effects on instruction, the motivation and well-being of youth inevitably had an impact on the results of the global assessment.

It couldn't be said any more clearly: the ‘Pandemic™’ mandates, according to the opinions across all Scandinavian countries, were primarily directed against children and young people. In this sense, though, the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Pandemic™’ has done little more than exacerbate pre-existing dynamics:

‘Finland’s Pisa results have…continued on a downward trend. What is significant is that skills have eroded substantially, and that’s why the results have to be taken seriously’, she stated at a news conference in Helsinki on Tuesday [5 Dec. 2023]. ‘The assessment results don’t provide an exhaustive answer as to how much of the erosion of learning outcomes is due to the pandemic and how much is due to other factors.’

‘It seems that the attitudes of pupils have changed mostly in a positive direction, but this isn’t reflected in the level of skills’, she added, pointing to the lack of maths-related anxiety and relatively positive experiences of teaching during the pandemic. ‘The performance gap between pupils has widened, and the home environment’s effect on learning outcomes has continued to grow. Girls continue to outperform boys, and pupils of immigrant backgrounds have weaker skills than other pupils.’

So it's clear—three Nordic countries, all of which are considered pioneers of digitalisation (and see themselves as such), independently come to the same conclusions: screen time is not a panacea and sometimes drastically exacerbates existing problems.

In addition, it is just as clear as the fact that the Covid mandates in particular further added fuel to these fires, in some cases drastically—and in a negative way.

Nordic Digital Delusions vs. ‘Catch-up Demand’ in Central Europe

At the end of this report, let's return to Norway, where Prime Minister Støre recently appeared before the assembled capital's press to present the government's plans for the next six months. Here you can find the original report from NRK, the relevant highlights of which follow below (PM Støre talked about many other things, but I'm leaving them out here):

Støre said the government would stop the ‘uncritical digitisation of schools’:

‘As we move from this year to the next, we take away discouraging news about Norwegian schools. The results of the latest Pisa survey are cause for concern’, said Støre.

Norwegian students are among those who enjoy reading the least. He added that student motivation is decreasing while screen use is increasing .

‘This worries many parents. Our goal is to reduce absenteeism and increase students’ concentration time’, said Støre, adding that he believes this will lead to more learning in Norwegian schools and better results.

We also note that Norway is no exception. The PISA study 2022 showed some serious problems regarding digitalisation and the effects of the Corona measures.

In addition, the corresponding announcements in Central Europe and the continued non-coming to terms of ‘Pandemic™’ mandates (see here for the example of Austria)—in particular regarding schools—appear not only to be extremely embarrassing, but above all to be hugely irresponsible.

The last word on this matter has certainly not been spoken, but this misery was caused by the ‘uncritical digitalisation’ of schools and drastically worsened by the ‘Pandemic™’ mandates. And it can be summarised in one short sentence (which comes from this otherwise banal Aftenposten report) :

Finland was a role model for all schools. Then came the new PISA results.

Let's see how long it takes for a corresponding rethinking to occur elsewhere.