This country had the world’s highest literacy rate. Then its children stopped reading!

Sweden's reading standards and school test scores have been falling - now experts have identified a cause with lessons for us all.

Roksana Schnittger is currently in the process of removing her seven-year-old son from his school in Sweden. Since the age of six, he’s been given a screen in class, yet she says the school cannot answer questions on the digital footprint it could leave behind for him.

Schnittger, who co-founded the Ki-DS Smartphone Free Movement, let her children play on screens from an early age – it was the norm among parents. But one day, when her son was four, and her phone wasn’t available to him, he was distraught. “He turned to me and said, ‘Mum, I don’t know how to play’. I couldn’t shake that off; it broke my heart. I didn’t know how it was possible. We have a playroom, he started riding a motorcycle when he was three. He was an active kid.”

That was the turning point, and she now keeps screen time to a minimum at home (often just having one movie night a week, split over the weekend and limited time on a Nintendo Switch) and wants her three children to stay away from screens at school. Her son, who is soon to turn eight, rides his bike to school alone and goes to the woods with his friends independently all without a phone. “It’s not just about enjoying his life but I would like him to be independent, solve problems alone, and not call me as soon as he hits a bump in the road. I want him to think critically for himself. When he goes to school, it’s 50 per cent I want him to enjoy the ride and feel free, and 50 per cent him learning to be independent.”

Sweden was once the poster child for digitalisation and known for its screen-first approach to education (tablets have been normal in its classrooms since the 2010s). In 1994, the then-prime minister Carl Bildt sent the first ever email and by the turn of the millennium, almost half of Swedes had access to the internet, compared to just a quarter of people in the UK, according to World Bank data. But now more parents like Schnittger, and some political parties, are turning their backs on the approach.

Read the full article at https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/country-worlds-highest-literacy-rate-children-stopped-reading-4326791