The announcement comes as a result of scientific research showing screens have negative effect on young children.
Swedish Minister for Schools [Liberal politician] Lotta Edholm, who took office 11 months ago as part of a new center-right coalition government, was one of the biggest critics of the all-out embrace of technology.
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The minister announced last month in a statement that the government … plans to go further and to completely end digital learning for children under age 6, the ministry also told The Associated Press.
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“There’s clear scientific evidence that digital tools impair rather than enhance student learning,” Sweden’s Karolinska Institute said in a statement last month on the country’s national digitalization strategy in education.
It’s a strong statement that digital tools impair learning. The liberal politician leading the charge seems to have decades of experience in schools, so this is apparently a long time coming. Even more interesting is that it’s happening under a coalition led by conservatives.
The change makes sense, however, given how writing and reading without screens is proven to sharpen the mind. Screens instead destroy attention span, destroy the sense of satisfaction and motivation that comes from physical work. The impairment can be critical with kids under six, because it’s the optimal time to learn basic skills.
Screens are an integrity disaster. They still are overloaded with saccharin distractions and irrelevant noise, not to mention predatory promotions, rarely if ever designed with the kind of mental clarity found with a pen and blank sheet of lined paper.
The FTC in America even is starting to wake up. Ronald Reagan’s sinister and pernicious deregulation of content targeting children still hasn’t been reversed, but there is a new weak tea report.
The best way to prevent harms stemming from blurred advertising is to not blur advertising,” the agency writes in the report, “Protecting Kids from Stealth Advertising in Digital Media.”
Clearly America is far behind, but maybe if they can get liberal and conservative politicians to form a coalition… haha, who am I kidding. Heavy screen use causes the exact kind of attention deficit that prevents formation of lasting and meaningful coalitions.