Sweden's return to pen and paper: implications for early learning in South Africa

In an age defined by screens, speed, and constant digital stimulation, Sweden’s recent decision to reinvest in pen-and-paper learning has captured global attention.

For a country long considered a pioneer of educational technology, this shift is not a rejection of innovation.

Rather, it is a powerful reminder of something education systems sometimes forget: the foundations of learning are human, tactile, and deeply relational.

At Afrika Tikkun Bambanani (ATB), this insight resonates strongly with our daily work in Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres across vulnerable South African communities.

While the global conversation debates tablets versus textbooks, our experience continues to affirm a simpler truth: young children learn best through play, movement, touch, language, and connection.

Sweden’s policy rethink is grounded in growing evidence that excessive screen exposure in early years can hinder concentration, language development, and deep comprehension.

Writing by hand strengthens memory.

Physical books support sustained attention. Real-world interaction builds cognitive and emotional regulation.

These are not new discoveries. They are confirmations of principles long embedded in play-based learning, the very approach that underpins high-quality ECD practice worldwide. In many ways, Sweden is not moving backwards. It is re-centring childhood.

For organisations like ATB, working in under-resourced communities, the conversation looks different; but the lesson is the same.

In settings where access to technology is limited, the global push toward digital-first education has sometimes created a false narrative: that quality learning depends on devices.

Yet in our ECD classrooms, transformation is happening every day without tablets or smartboards.

It happens when a child builds with blocks and discovers balance. When a teacher tells a story in a child’s home language and sparks imagination.

When singing, drawing, and pretend play lay the neural pathways for literacy and numeracy long before formal schooling begins. These moments- simple, joyful, profoundly human- are where real learning lives.

At ATB, play-based learning is not an add-on or enrichment activity. It is the core pedagogy through which children develop language and early literacy, problem-solving and numeracy thinking, social skills and emotional regulation, and curiosity, confidence, and creativity.

These are the very competencies education systems later struggle to build through worksheets and exams alone.

Sweden’s return to pen and paper signals a broader global realisation: technology cannot replace developmental readiness. Before children swipe, they must grasp. Before they type, they must draw.

Before they consume information, they must imagine.

None of this suggests that technology has no place in education.

At ATB, digital assessment tools and teacher training platforms play an important role in strengthening quality and monitoring progress. The question is not whether technology belongs in learning; but when and how.

The danger lies in introducing screens before children have built the sensory, linguistic, and relational foundations that make meaningful learning possible.

Across continents, educators are beginning to ask deeper questions: Are we preparing children for devices, or for life?

Are we accelerating learning, or undermining its foundations? Are we listening to neuroscience- or to market trends? In South Africa, where inequality already threatens children’s futures before school even begins, these questions carry particular urgency.

The most powerful investment we can make is not in hardware, but in high-quality early childhood experiences- trained teachers, rich language environments, safe spaces to play, and communities that value childhood itself.

Sweden’s decision is more than a policy adjustment. It is a signal to the world that the earliest years matter most, and that the tools of childhood- paper, pencils, stories, song, and play- remain irreplaceable.

At Afrika Tikkun Bambanani, we see this truth daily. And we are reminded that educational innovation is not always found in the newest technology, but often in the oldest wisdom: children learn through play, children learn through people, and children learn when childhood is protected.

If the future of education is being rewritten, perhaps it will begin not on a screen; but on a blank page, held in small hands, filled first with drawings, then with words, and ultimately with possibility.

Pascale Bakos is the Head of Communications at Afrika Tikkun Bambanani.

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