Laptops, some schools in Finland return to paper and pen

This fall, students in the Finnish town of Riihimaki returned to school with backpacks full of books and notebooks. This year students have abandoned laptops and other digital equipment in class.

Finland's public educational system is known in the world for its success in recent decades and its willingness to test new teaching techniques.

Until recently, many schools gave free laptops to all students at the age of 11. But Finnish parents and teachers, like elsewhere in the world, have become increasingly concerned about the impact of digital equipment on children.

So in Riihimaki, a town of about 30,000 people north of Helsinki, which had stopped using most books in high schools since 2018?

Maiya Kaononen, an English - speaking teacher at Pohjolanrin High School, says that although not against digital equipment, she is happy to restore books.

I'm happy for the change. I haven't been against digital material at all, I've been using them for many years, but first of all, I haven't been impressed by digital equipment. They weren't good enough, I guess, for teaching purposes. Books make young people focus more on learning, and there are fewer distractions with books, and I think it's much better. ”

She related the problems she encountered when children used digital devices during class hours.

The majority of students, I think, were just exercising as fast as they could in order to spend time in games and conversation in social media and so on. And they needed very little time to change sites. So when the teacher approached them, they could say, "Yes, I was doing this exercise," but most students were using laptops for games and things like that. So there were many distractions. ”

Besides teachers, students are happy with new changes.

The “is quite beautiful because the ability to concentrate improves and, for example, if you have to do your homework late at night, it's easier to sleep when you've spent time on screen. ”

Maybe when we used the most Chromebook, I sometimes went to different websites. I didn't always focus on the basics. ”

I can concentrate better. And doing homework is easier because I don't have to rely on a digital device to do this. As for writing, it is a bit tiring but learns faster. ”

Minna Peltopururo, a psychologist, says that the time spent on screen should be reduced to minimum.

Currently, Finnish teenagers spend up to six hours a day on the screen. For him, overuse of digital devices comes with physical and mental dangers and causes problems such as eye problems and increased anxiety.

Total time should be minimal, so not hours before the screen, but something less. And another is multiasking. I mean, you're doing a computer exercise and then you go check the Instagram, is there a message? And then you go back to math and then you go to Snapchat and then you go back to math and you see that, okay, I can't do this without any guidance. And you go to another computer site to find instructions and turn to math and so on. So the brain is very vulnerable when you're doing many things at a time especially at an early age. So they can't manage it well. ”

Throughout Finland, children's learning results have fallen in recent years, prompting the government to plan a new legislation to prevent the use of personal devices, such as phones, during school hours to cut children's time in front of the screen.