Sweden brings more books and handwriting practice back to its schools (2023)
333 comments
·January 15, 2025submeta
NoboruWataya
And let's be honest, a good book collection is a great addition to a room, aesthetically. People tend not to talk about that aspect, I think they worry about being seen as pretentious showing off their books. But I think a book collection can be a great decoration, just as flowers or a painting can be.
And if you have family or friends over and one of them sees something they like, you can lend it to them there and then (if you are so inclined). Some of my earliest reading-related memories are being in an uncle's or neighbour's house and being fascinated by a book on a shelf that they kindly let me take home to read.
illiac786
I actually made the opposite experience. Books nowadays have so many different format and colors, it’s really hard to make it esthetically pleasing, I have multiple walls full of books and they look like a mess, I dislike it.
Even if I could make it look nice, it would then be an intellectual mess, it wouldn’t be organised properly, I would struggle to find anything.
Actually, good question, how do you people organise your books? (Full disclosure, I’m messy)
iamacyborg
Learn French and then you can have a wall of books with white spines.
duckmysick
I organize them by the color, either rainbow-style or from darker to brighter.
> it wouldn’t be organised properly, I would struggle to find anything.
Libraries solve this with the Dewey Decimal Classification. Most people don't have enough books for it make sense though.
For me, I don't have that many paper books and the ones I own I know by the side and the color. I keep the books that I reference often in a separate place. I noticed I don't need to find all of the books, all of the time. So organize most of your books to look pretty.
You can also group similar books together on a single shelf and then order them by color. For example I have a dozen of cookbooks and those go on a separate shelf, arranged in a rainbow. I also have a book series that goes neatly together, so I keep them it grouped too.
I also organize my clothes like that too. By general category first (t-shirts, pants, socks, jackets), and then by color.
I used to be extremely messy too (piles of clothes and documents, cardboard boxes, you know the deal). I turned it around after I read the Marie Kondo book "The life-changing Magic of Tidying up". Then after I got the mess under control I look at the pictures for inspiration how to make it aesthetically pleasing. I got a lot of ideas from Pinterest (I know, I know), but you can do an image search or check the organization subreddits too.
internet_points
Put them backwards in the shelves – now everything is calm and paper-coloured.
djhn
And they improve room acoustics a decent amount, making the space that much more pleasant.
Obscurity4340
Are books like a natural version of those fancy futuristic sound panels in recording studios?
knighthack
While I agree with the sentiment, I have hesitation in letting people see what I read.
In a way, you're letting people see the nature of things that you read - from which they might glean the nature of your thoughts, and privacy is something we all value. For that reason (and since I don't have any particular sentimental value for books, only their contents) I've long since preferred a digital library. As a minimalist, having a single Kindle on the table is aesthetics enough for me, which is complementary of the minimalist viewpoint as well.
However, I completely agree with the fact that having a physical library is a very conducive environment for kids to grow up with. I remember fun memories of my childhood reading from the home library, and thinking how pretty and colourful the shelves were too. But I think there should be a distinction between cultivating a library for your kids, versus that for the observation and assessment of strangers.
dbtc
That, to me, is closer to a policy of isolation than privacy, which sounds unhealthy to me, unless maybe you're some kind professional spy or military strategist. Privacy is good; so are water and salt. We also value connection.
Minimalism is secretly about maximizing something, perhaps empty space and silence, or perhaps something else that you love.
Finally, life is layered on as we live it - that kid is still in there somewhere ;)
I'm not trying to prescribe necessarily, just giving a different point of view.
Loughla
Do you not have human conversations with your friends and family? That's also a way for them to learn about you.
I like your view in this because it's just so different than anything I've thought before. Having books in common areas sparks conversation, real, substantive conversation with family, friends, and acquaintances. It's one of my favorite things to talk about at get togethers.
baq
> While I agree with the sentiment, I have hesitation in letting people see what I read.
Woah there. Nobody* is showing off their playboy collection either. The visible bookshelf is just what you want others to see. You don’t even have to read those books. It’s like your Facebook wall - a facade of yourself.
* of course there are people proud of their playboy collection and showing it off
brador
Amazon through the kindle is storing massive amounts of data about your reading habits. Statistically, and inevitably, this information will be used against your best interests.
Maybe simply to sell you something you don’t need, to price up your insurance, or as a layup to a precrime you have yet to commit.
If reading privacy matter a kindle isn’t it. Imho.
Saigonautica
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I share what I read, but only with very close friends. I'm hesitant to lend books out -- people are not great at returning them (partly my fault, I'm also bad at tracking the loans). I also have a hard time finding my books, as I live in a very small house (bookshelves are out of the question, it's numbered bins).
I am also wary of most of the cloud services in this domain.
So I wrote a little software to manage the situation -- just a simple CRUD thing that lets me manage a small personal library, or a small shared library between friends. It's not a "social network for books" or something grand like that. Just a simple self-hosted thing with minimal system requirements. There were some existing solutions, but none that really felt right.
It's published (open source) and has a few users, but I don't think I'll be able to manage it, if it receives a giant burst of attention. On github it's called 'ubiblio'. Perhaps I'll be ready to share it more generally in a few months.
Not sure if it's useful to you, but I hope it is!
michaelt
> I have hesitation in letting people see what I read [...] privacy is something we all value.
Other people are replying to you acting like this is strange, but it's actually something normal people do all the time.
Every politician being interviewed from their home for TV news, every professor recording video lectures, every remote working CEO, and every twitch streamer has considered what is on display behind them.
If I choose shelves as my background, do I want eagle-eyed viewers to see my copies of playboy, my figurines of naked anime ladies, and my copies of the communist manifesto and mein kampf? As a matter of fact I don't.
Clubber
>from which they might glean the nature of your thoughts, and privacy is something we all value.
I mean you let them into your house, privacy kinda goes out the window when you do that. You can always put books you don't want people to know you read in your bedroom or something.
neuralRiot
To me “minimalism” is just a poor excuse for bad design and aesthetic sense, like dressing all black or white to avoid color coordination. It’s easy, but totally devoid of personality and expression.
eleveriven
It’s a window into your interests, personality
itishappy
Sure, but so is every interaction with me. Surely the friends you've just invited into your home are already privy to much of this info?
graemep
I will not buy DRMed ebooks. I hate the idea that someone can delete a book I bought. Once I have a book, I want to keep it.
I have quite a lot of books that belong to be grandfather, and lots that belonged to my parents. A lot of those will last another generation, maybe more. That does not happen with ebooks either.
op00to
I buy books and immediately rip the drm out. They get their money, I get my book.
hagbard_c
Where do you live? If you live in the USA you're violating the DMCA, if you live in the EU it is the EUCD which you'll be breaking, elsewhere there may be similar directives. That 'they get their money' does not make any difference here, it is the 'circumvention of technological protection measures' which makes you into a law breaker.
bluGill
On that note, does anyone have a copy of "The C programing language" (first edition) that isn't falling apart because the acid paper is decaying? I was referring to my copy the other day and it is clear the days I own that book are numbered because of planned obsolesce in the 1970s. I never bought the second edition, but if I did I'm sure it too would be falling apart from age before my likely death.
tartoran
First edition may be collectible regardless of condition. And as well as newer editions it is resalable. Can you sell an used ebook you bought? How about can you buy an used ebook?
dokyun
I got a lightly used copy off Amazon, along with "The UNIX programming environment" a year or two ago, probably. They're both fine with only a bit of wear, but I don't think they were ever of a super sturdy binding that would hold up well under heavy abuse.
spc476
I have a copy of the second edition from 1990, still in good condition (and a finer print job than later editions [1]).
galleywest200
It is trivially easy to remove DRM with a plugin for Calibre.
protonbob
Not with the latest encryption. Although you can always screenshot and ocr. Or maybe I've missed something new.
NoboruWataya
I think it's easier with some providers than others. I bought an Amazon ebook that I was really struggling to de-DRM (so I promptly returned it and have only bought books with Adobe DRM since).
seszett
It's probably even easier to download them from Z-Library after having bought them on whatever legal platform.
fullstop
eBooks can be backed up and survive a house fire or a flood, though.
thih9
Depends where the house fire or a flood is. If it's in a data center then they might suddenly disappear[1].
[1]: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/ovhcloud-fire...
dowager_dan99
the challenge is I don't love my books for the content, but for their essence, so ebooks just aren't as valuable. If my physically books were destroyed in a fire I would be sad because i lost the objects, not temporarily lost access to the contents.
Aeolun
You can buy an extra copy of the book too!
zem
I'm kind of the opposite, I can't bring myself to let go of my collection of paper books, or even to stop buying a new one every so often, but I do not like the physical experience of reading one nearly as much as I like the experience of reading on a phone or kindle. holding a book in one hand and turning a page with a click is a really wonderful way to read.
tsujamin
The standard I arrived at is roughly "would I be sad if, in 15 years, I forgot about this book/piece of music?". If it's something that I enjoyed so much today that I'd be afraid to lose it amongst 10,000's of eBooks or songs on a streaming platform, I physically buy it.
snoman
I like this. I do something similar; I ask myself “Am I buying this for the knowledge inside it, or the experience of it?”
I buy the latter. Be it a comic book, photography book, or something else. Those are artistic experiences for me.
jhbadger
Exactly. I've even gone to the trouble of getting ebooks of physical books that I have in some cases. I vastly prefer the size and weight of an e-reader as compared to most books, plus the ability to change the font size to something I can easier read as opposed to the small fonts often chosen by paper books to minimize pages.
OJFord
> I regret the decision having gone fully digital, which can only be a complement to physical books.
I've long thought the purchase of a book should be considered a licence: you pay a little more if you want a physical version too, but they're not separate things; the digital ebook comes free/is the basic way your licence can be exercised.
(Ideally licenced people would be allowed to order cheap replacements if they damaged the physical copy, but how would you stop fraudulent sale & continual replacement-ordering.)
personalityson
Have you ever noticed than even after using screens/computers/phones for 12 hours a day, they almost never appear in your dreams when you sleep?
wholinator2
My phone has come up in some dreams. But it seems my dream world can't properly render it cause it's always blurry, but even when I'm doing something specific, it has never, not once, worked the way its supposed to. My dream phones always do about 1 action and then completely stop responding. Then i get confused because i had a specific task in mind that's slowly fading and all i know is this diffusing rectangle in my floating palm is disobeying me. The dream moves on
personalityson
I have a recurring dream where I'm trying to type something on my phone, and it never comes out right, I delete and try again and again, can't hit the right buttons
_kb
It's a security limit in the simulation to help prevent sandbox escape.
amonith
There's a "threat simulation theory" that sort of explains it, but it's not 100% correct for everyone. TL;DR: in dreams your brain often seems to practice "threats"/stressful situations. E.g. you're more likely to dream about missing work, having exams, car breaking, running from someone, interacting with someone you care about etc. rather than doing something you're completely used to.
wholinator2
I wonder if very small children dream about screens then don't understand. Like, if a poor small child got hit with the car commercial or the maze jump scare, would that get added to the threat list? I'm talking young enough that they can't tell you it's a screen. Do babies dream? What could they ever dream about? Is there a library of set concepts that we're all genetically made to fear, if so, how would that be represented in dreams? Gosh
eliasson
I have never thought about that!
Even if the last thing going through my head before sleep is related to programming (which is quite often the case), I cannot remember having dreamed of computers, ever.
fsiefken
that's interesting, i don't remember my dreams often but I do remember books and comics - I even distinctly remember being lucid, reading a really good comic - but not my screen work or apps. Perhaps my brain just cannot LLM them convincingly? Are there lucid dreamers that sit behind their dream computers? If so, what are they doing, and do the programs give coherent responses? Are people playing chess or solo card- en boardgames or with dream characters?
apsurd
you just blew my mind
sitkack
I understand your pain, we all seem to make dichotomies where none should exist.
Getting rid of print books is not a prerequisite for carrying your entire library with you. Why not both meme.
Hopefully ebooks will get to the point where they offer a better experience than paper books. But my mind does not handle the information in nearly the same way when using ebooks. I find them wonderfully valuable and productive, but in the same deep introspective way. They are transactional, focused and very task directed.
watwut
I ebooks better for reading already. Physical books advantage is that I can read inside them in bookstore - bookstores are much better for me when I looking for something new.
But I prefer actual reading on the phone.
bluGill
Are you reading, or are you studying? When reading my phone is great. When I want to study though I will want to take notes, compare tables on different pages and other such things that my phone doesn't work for.
sandworm101
I have a library of work-related books (military). Most of the great ones have no digital alternative. Authors of rare or definitive works know to avoid digital formats. Last year I paid 200+ to get my hands on a newly printed book because i know it will still be relevant on my shelf in 10/20/30 years. After reading it once I may leave it on that shelf for years. One day i will need it again. I will know where to find it no matter what OS i will then be using.
Things like this cannot be bought digitally, nor would most readers want a digital copy. http://www.hisutton.com/pages/Book%20project.html
I cannot champion this guy enough. His website belongs jn the 90s (it needs the "www") but his skills in open source analysis and drawing are unmatched. (He draws in MS paint!)
globular-toast
I read all fiction on my Kobo these days. I used to collect paperbacks but they take up a lot of space, especially if you're getting through 20+ books a year. I basically hoard books on my Kobo so I never don't have another book to read.
I do remove the DRM, though. I still want to own books.
But paper is still by far the best format for textbooks. It's not even close.
silisili
I definitely agree that just giving kids a laptop/chromebook instead of books is not working. My own child and her friends just don't have the focus required, and easily get distracted out to email, group chats, everything else going on right next to the text.
That said, one thing I appreciate is that she doesn't have to lug around 30lb backpacks like kids did when I was a child. We had lockers, but realistically they didn't provide adequate time to utilize them, so everyone just carried around all their books for the day. Most of us hunched forward because of the weight.
It seems like something like a dumb ereader would be a good middle ground? Put all the textbooks into one place, but don't give it the ability to do anything but read? That or keep the textbooks in the classroom and share.
jpcom
Physical books are still better than e-readers because you can put sticky notes on the pages, jump back and forth between pages quickly, and even start to know where pages are simply based on how many leaves/pages are split between your left and right hand. Textbooks are basically reference books, my favorite dictionaries I start to "learn by hand" to know where to flip to approximately to start my search.
imadethis
I'd agree except for the ability to search in an e-book. There's nothing worse than knowing the textbook in front of you contains the answer you need but not remembering which of the 1500 pages contains it. Being able to CTRL-F saved me hours of time when I went back to school after e-books became common.
jcranmer
For a current project, I've been using a physical book as a reference manual for the API I'm working with rather than using the more typical internet search for the function name. And it's actually somewhat surprising how efficient a physical book is!
Sure, there's a lot of efficiency to Ctrl-F a text string and just find all the places in a document. I won't deny that it takes me longer to pull up the index, search for the function name in the index, then flip to the page. But then I can just leave the book open at that page on the desk (or my lap). I never have to Alt-Tab, or fiddle with the location of windows to switch between looking at documentation and looking at the code I'm working on.
This difference was more stark when I was trying to close-read a different specification to ensure that I understood it well enough to make sure a PR implemented it correctly. I needed to have three different parts of the specification open simultaneously to bounce between all of them. With physical paper, that's just a swish of a hand away. With a PDF reader, well, goto that other section, scroll down to the piece I wanted, now goto the first section again and scroll down again and wait what was that back thing again goto and scroll and scroll and goto and descent into insanity. Trying to use multiple windows ameliorates the problem somewhat, but it also takes an inordinate amount of time to set the view up correctly, and I often end up running into the "focus doesn't follow the eye gaze" problem of typing in the wrong window and ruining the view.
groby_b
A decent index solves that just fine. And usually outpaces ctrl-f chasing for a given word, because it's indexing by ideas, not words. (If it's a decent index, that is :)
sharkjacobs
On the one hand, yes, I agree. There's something about the tactility of a book, about dogeared pages, and marginalia, and having muscle memory to open a book at about the same spot where I left off.
I grew up with that and it's a very comfortable skill set.
On the other hand, I've learned ways to manage and reference information in digital formats. Bookmarks and links and pasted snippets. Attachments and full text search. Not to even get into real sicko stuff like Notion and Obsidian and DEVONthink.
Being able to easily flip back and forth between pages is a very useful technique, but so is being able to snap a screenshot of a pdf and keep it open it in another window.
I'm a sucker for paper but I'm resistant to the idea that all of these things are irreplaceable
Suppafly
>I'm a sucker for paper but I'm resistant to the idea that all of these things are irreplaceable
This, I'm really comfortable with technology, but I feel like a boomer when I watch kids that have grown up with it their entire lives. Some people don't need the ability to cross reference things much, but folks who do develop the skills the need without having to revert to printed material.
iforgot22
My high school was mainly textbooks, then things were more digital in college. Normally I'm against fancy new tech, but this felt like an improvement in hindsight. I was never missing the book I needed, there's cmd+f and page skip, I can annotate without ruining it...
The real problem seems to be licensing. Lots of books are physical-only, and the digital versions are those annoying "epub" files instead of PDFs.
nottorp
Aren't PDFs a relic of the past, when you wanted to print digital documents on paper?
Epubs can be reflowed to fit any screen. If done properly at least. For PDFs you basically need an A4/letter screen to read them comfortably.
Suppafly
>Physical books are still better than e-readers because you can put sticky notes on the pages, jump back and forth between pages quickly, and even start to know where pages are simply based on how many leaves/pages are split between your left and right hand.
Only because you prefer to work that way, someone that has grown up with everything digital has equivalent skills doing that stuff using tabs, digital sticky notes, bookmarks, and such.
nfw2
Many of the beneficial affordances you mention that are available for print but not in ebooks is partly because ebook technology is kind of bad. Navigation and annotation for example could be much better in ebooks if developers put more care into those ergonomics.
throw5959
My sister that's studying medicine says that her books would be totally ruined in half a year if she used them like she uses the virtual ones.
ndr42
The same is true for my students (german school system, iPads form 7th to 13th grade): They are marking, annotating and rearranging parts of the digitized pages as they like. It would be impossible with printed books. (ok, they could take a picture with the camera and do the same) They have/use printed books but most of the students are borrowing them from the school and are not allowed to write in them.
So I use mostly digital material and most of the books stay at home for studying (the books are heavy).
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
How does she use the virtual ones?
eviks
> jump back and forth between pages quickly
You can't do it quickly. Jumping between random pages isn't useful (and not faster than in an ebook), so you want to jump to a specific page, and here ebook is much faster, whether you're opening a page number or a page with some content you remember
> know where to flip to approximately to start my search.
Or you can start precisely with an ebook
dredmorbius
With the use of bookmarks (prepared or improvised with index cards, etc.) or sticky notes, precision jumping within a physical book is very quick, easy, and useful.
the_clarence
I personally never used any of these things back when I was a student
kccqzy
My high school doesn't use entire textbooks; it uses either excerpts from a textbook or lecture notes produced by the teacher. This solves the 30lb backpack problem nicely: you realistically only bring the necessary notes or textbook required for the last few days of instruction. Anything that's earlier gets left behind at home because you won't need to refer to it often.
silisili
Interesting. This is actually a pretty nice middleground. If books were designed more like a binder of notebooks, perhaps by chapter, it would solve the weight issue while still allowing for all the things people love about paper books.
kccqzy
These days some textbooks are available as loose leaf textbooks too.
iforgot22
We did this in high school. I kept forgetting what I had to bring for all my textbook-based classes each day or what I had to bring home, so I simply carried ~50lb of stuff everywhere. That's ok cause I got swol. Some kids said this was dumb, but they forgot stuff too.
fifilura
How do they handle copyright?
kccqzy
The teachers produced most of the lecture notes. The textbooks excerpts were short and in hindsight must be covered by fair use.
anticensor
Statutory exemption for face-to-face education (this is separate from fair use)?
IshKebab
Heavy backpacks full of textbooks are an American style of education. There are other options between huge textbooks and laptops.
chrisco255
Carrying weight from books is good for you. Takes care of your physical fitness and mental fitness.
dalke
If the bag is too heavy (especially if unbalanced, like carrying it on one shoulder) then the kid can cause back problems.
See https://scoliosisinstitute.com/heavy-backpacks/ for more details.
ninalanyon
There is no excuse for schools being so badly organized that this is a problem. It certainly was not a problem when I was at school in the '60s and early '70s. All the books I needed fitted in a briefcase. It also was not a big problem for my children going to school in Norway between 1990 and 2015.
But children should also be taught how to carry backpacks properly, not unbalanced on one shoulder.
nfw2
To a degree. I was tiny in school, always smallest kid in my grade, and lugging 30 pounds of books around every day means I now have scoliosis.
Suppafly
>and lugging 30 pounds of books around every day means I now have scoliosis.
Doctors claim that heavy backpacks don't cause scoliosis, but can make the associated back pain worse.
BurningFrog
I would call it "schooliosis" if I were you.
Suppafly
>I definitely agree that just giving kids a laptop/chromebook instead of books is not working.
I'm not really sure why people are pretending it's an either/or situation. Plenty of things are taught just fine or better with technology, but books still have a purpose.
>My own child and her friends just don't have the focus required, and easily get distracted out to email, group chats, everything else going on right next to the text.
That stuff is usually blocked or limited on school owned laptops. If it's not your child's school is failing at something that is very basic.
rags2riches
I was talking to my ten-year-old about some recent event and came to ask him how he'd learned about it. "Oh, I often check the news in school at the the beginning of class". I hadn't realized just how far the use of laptops had reached in his school. Putting distractions like that between a young child and the things we want them to study is insane, if you ask me.
cynicalsecurity
Have you ever tried using e-reader? It's slow as hell. Slow in turning the pages, slow in rendering anything that is not text. Making notes functionality is a disaster. Sure, you can search through text, but if it's PDF or images, you are screwed.
scythe
My advisor used a reMarkable 2 and loved it. I think that there is a range of quality available.
duxup
Amen. My son's backpack is light as a feather.
I remember carrying my bag full, and still carrying books and notebooks in my arms. It was horrible and I'd end up digging through them to find things, not need it all ... not fun or efficient.
fn-mote
I'm unclear if this is a real article.
It claims to be published in 2025 but it refers to 2022-2025 in the future tense.
> [...] Sweden’s putting 104 million euros into bringing books back into classrooms from 2022 to 2025
See the comment identifying a legitimate source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42716448
Suppafly
Plus 104 million euros seems like a normal amount of money to spend updating the curriculum for an entire country. This is likely just updating the curriculum over a few years from older books to newer ones and basically unrelated to the divide between laptops and printed books.
lkramer
Scandinavian countries went very hardcore digital for a while, giving all kids iPads and Laptops, and getting rid of all physical books. This sounds like a strong reversal, and I hope the other Scandinavian countries will learn some lessons from this.
shw1n
One belief I have is that a major lifehack in a digital world is making things as physical as possible.
Spend all day at a computer? Get a mechanical keyboard so every keystroke is satisfying.
Learn keyboard shortcuts so you're on the mouse less.
Find yourself frequently turning something on/off via your phone? Get a physical button and map it -- e.g. physical volume knob
Gotta mock something up or understand a codebase? Physical draw it in a notebook
Got a dense book to read? Buy the print copy and go somewhere without a phone
Obviously costs more money and space, but anything I can offload to a 'spatial' part of my brain is welcome these days
dalke
My eldest doesn't like the computers they have in grade 2 (in Sweden). He thinks the things installed on them are too boring and easy. He would rather read books.
Thing is, the school doesn't have a staff librarian any more. As I understand it, they got rid of that position as part of the cost shifting to switch to digital.
georgebcrawford
This is so upsetting to hear. The librarians at my school are amazing. The students don't know how good they have it, but us teachers certainly do.
Agentlien
My sister is a librarian in Sweden and used to work in schools. She was very upset by this. Fortunately, the government is backpedaling and bringing them back[1]
1: https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2024/06/nu-ska-al...
dalke
I weep a little inside every time I pass the unstaffed school library.
dr_dshiv
To support paper-digital integration, we created https://www.smartpaperapp.com/
It’s not special paper—it’s just a computer vision system to help teacher easily convert student work on paper to digital marks. The state of Rajasthan in India uses this product to assess math and literacy for 5 million students each year.
At a personal level, I’m frustrated by son’s school that uses a digital LMS to have teachers assign jpgs of pages of the books. I find it hard to help him because I don’t know what he has done and what he will do—something that a book makes natural. At the same time, I’m a fan of cognitive tutors and other digital instructional materials. Balance is good!
torcete
I "discovered" libraries. They are cool! They usually offer more services than just books. But you have plenty of books that you don't need to keep after having read them, and the trip to the library is like a discovery journey.
Even more, my library also has comics and comic books. These are usually quite expensive, and now I can just read them for free.
SpaceToast
I recently learned that my library has 3D printers for anyone to use, and microfilm of local newspapers going back to 1797; it really is incredible what you can discover in them!
duderific
One interview question I like to give for software engineering candidates at my company is "rough out the model for an online library, where users can check out up to three books, they will be charged for overdue books" etc.
Recently I had a candidate who essentially had no idea what I was talking about. They had never checked out a book from a library.
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but I still was.
eesmith
If a candidate comments that libraries are getting rid of overdue fines as research has found it's not effective at getting books back in time, while negatively affecting their poorest members, and that libraries which got rid of fines found it "has raised circulation numbers, brought lapsed users back to the library, and boosted goodwill" (quoting https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/the-end-of-fines ) - would that improve or worsen their changes of employment with you?
Are you looking for someone who will follow orders, or looking for someone who will challenge them?
I suspect no one has brought it up, but wonder if any have decided to not bring it up for worry that a challenge would risk their chance of being hired.
duderific
It would neither improve nor worsen their chances. I'm only looking for their ability to model a software application.
I wouldn't see it as a challenge, as it has nothing to do with the task at hand. If they said "I don't want to do this exercise, because I don't believe in library fines," that might hurt their chances.
My comment was more about being surprised that they had never checked out a book from a library, since I thought that was a fairly universal experience, at least for software engineers, but going forward I don't think I'll assume that.
NegatioN
I think books are the best medium for learning some things, and probably in some aspects for writing.
However I'm worried some countries seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
There are many things that are easier to learn with computers/screens than without as well, they just need to fit the medium. [0]
Intended as a reply, but the comment got deleted, so I might as well include it here:
The article [0] is focused on homeschooling, so the exact points listed there doesn't necessarily have a leg up on traditional media (implying you're in the right environment to facilitate learning these skills well without computers, which I don't think most kids are).
One off-hand example [where screens can be better than a book], would probably be using simulations to assist in learning physics, instead of just solving the equation on a page. Things where interactivity sets the learning in better context than a book probably would.
I'm also very excited to try teaching our child math using apps like DragonBox, which seems to allow for much easier visualization of how to solve equations than I got at school. [1]
null
skirge
I read a lot of books while being at primary and secondary school and most of my colleagues didn't, they had other things to do. Now I read on Kindle and others watch Netflix or scroll Facebook. Form of the book is not a root cause of the problem.
hintymad
Speaking of school, I find it disturbing that many schools switch to pure digital, i-ready and that some similar shit. The problem with pure digital is that the kids won't learn how to communicate math, like writing down step-by-step solutions to word problems in elementary schools, rigorous geometry proofs in grade 7, and algebraic derivations and proofs after grade 7. Those kind of work was natural to my generation when we grew up - it's just what our teachers trained us to do. And now it's a uphill battle to help my kids even understand the importance of doing proper maths.
A general theme, though, is that I don't get why it's so hard for Americans to stick to the traditional but good practices, like getting rigorous training in STEM, like not solely relying on multiple choices, like hiring good teachers and firing bad ones, etc and etc.
duderific
The school districts have all kinds of conflicting incentives and priorities. Someone is telling them "go digital, it's the future! Kids have to learn to use technology!" Now folks are telling them "but the kids don't learn well with laptops! Go back to books!" So are they going to abandon the sizable investment they made in getting every kid a Chromebook?
> like hiring good teachers and firing bad ones There are these things called unions...
carlhjerpe
This shows how thoughtful our politicians are, they're shooting from the hip at best. It's just dumb luck we haven't fucked up more than we have, and that we have natural resources to lean on (Iron, wood, water).
Everything is over budget, nobody is accountable and psychological wellbeing is way down the drain.
carlhjerpe
My point being that politicians were going "ooh computers are good, let's slap a computer onto everything", but then only where they can bikeshed computers into the system as it seems easy at first (education). But without national guidelines to make it good, and no guidelines for medical IT and friends. It seems like Estonia "did computers right" more than Sweden.
I went fully digital some years ago, gave away most of my printed books and bought ebooks only. Now I have my whole library in Calibre and on my Kindle. Why? Because I have my whole library with me. And I can download my highlights and process them. Into notes in Obsidian, that I can link to in my study notes.
Recently I started buying paper based books again. Man, I missed holding physical books in my hands. And I start to regret having gotten rid of my physical library. There were so many memories I had with most of these books. I remember their covers, and instantly my emotions , thoughts, feelings are triggered. I don’t have these emotions when I think of my digital books.
My spouse has books that she was gifted when she was a child. Still in our kids shelf. I cannot give her my digital books.
I regret the decision having gone fully digital, which can only be a complement to physical books.
Printed books are a physical experience. Something that allows me to attach thoughts, emotions, feelings to it. And they can become part of my life. Like a good friend.