Back To The Future: What Sweden’s ‘Back to Books’ Movement Reveals About the Future of Functional Education
- Jul 28
- 26 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Beyond the Screens: Back to Books
Sweden's schools are cutting back on digital learning. Sweden's government is championing a renewed focus on physical books, paper and pens in classrooms, designed to reverse falling literacy levels. But does technology really weaken the cognitive abilities of children and adolescents?
Yup, an interesting and toptical subject right now with 7 European countries doing the same kind of policy change. As it happens, I met a professor and lecturer in Morphology from the Netherlands just this morning and had the same conversation. We are clearly of the same mind on this issue, although I admit my rhetoric in this respect towards the big tech corporations may be a little more vehement than his. Unfortunatrely, it frequently feels like this is necessary to get the strength of feeling within the message across in order to be heard above the power and coercion exercised by those big corporations. When you are smaller and weaker, the most common compensation if not the only option is to be more aggressive, superior smarts if any notwithstanding.
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Back to the Future: A Tech Pioneer’s Unexpected U-Turn
Sweden has long been celebrated as a global beacon of digital integration. As one of Europe’s most tech-savvy societies—bolstered by high levels of digital skills and a thriving startup scene—it was the last place the world expected a retreat from the digital classroom. Yet, a significant "Sweden Paradox" is emerging: the government is now aggressively championing a return to physical books, paper, and pens.
This shift is not a simple reactionary retreat; it is a strategic response to falling literacy levels and a growing realization that a digital-first approach may have bypassed fundamental cognitive milestones. For those of us in the policy space, Sweden’s pivot provides a vital case study in the transition toward "Functional Education." This model treats literacy and physical engagement not as archaic holdovers, but as critical infrastructure for economic competitiveness and personal resilience in the 21st century.
But doubling down on analogue tools has drawn criticism from tech companies, educators and computer scientists, who argue it could impact pupils' employment prospects, and even damage the Nordic nation's economy. At a high school in Nacka just outside Stockholm, final-year students are unpacking laptops from rucksacks and tote bags, alongside items they say they used less frequently a few years ago.
"I now go home from school with new books and papers often," says Sophie, 18.
It's an image that clashes with Sweden's reputation as one of Europe's most tech savvy societies, thanks to high levels of digital skills, and a thriving tech start-up scene.
Takeaway 1: Reclaiming the Physical Foundation (Layer 1: Active and Practical Training)
The transition is most visible in the daily lives of students. In schools like the high school in Nacka, outside Stockholm, the ubiquitous laptop is no longer the sole arbiter of knowledge.
"I now go home from school with new books and papers often," says Sophie, an 18-year-old student. She notes that her teachers have begun printing all texts for lessons and swapping digital platforms for textbook-only instruction in subjects like mathematics.
In the SeTs Ryu framework, this shift represents a return to Layer 1: Active and Practical Training. We must view physical interaction with texts as the essential "onsite workout" for the mind. This analogue foundation is a non-negotiable prerequisite; it builds the deep focus and tactile literacy required before a student can effectively navigate the more complex cognitive demands of Layer 2 (online constructive learning). Without this physical "workout," the mind lacks the stamina for higher-level investigative research.
It also helps avoid the ADD trap. Digital devices are loaded with alternative links, widgets and other elements that are constantly competing for attention. Then there is the 'blue light' effect from screens that messes with eyes and the circadian body clock. This makes it very difficult to maintain focus on the page or text at hand. It encourages ADHD like behaviour and short attention spans, which social media has consistently played on with ever shorter videos, that feed the worst characteristics of human mind states. It feeds an insatiable apetite for instant gratification instead of earned rewards. Kids are being diagnosed as ADHD in increasing numbes because psychologists have no clue what is causing it or how to treat it. So instead, they just dump all such cases under the sundry account of ADHD.
Personal experience with my own daughter made it very clear that social media is a root cause or at least the vehicle of that problem. Going back to books largely removes this problem in one clean sweep. Social Media bans for for under 16's finishes off the job and also protects them from malevolent influence and tons of out of context information they are unable to process or interpret durimg those croitical development ages. The problem is in enforcing it. The practicalities of verifying identity and authorising access are a technical and a data protection and privacy problem that is often as undesirable as the original problem itself. Parents alone have already shown they cannot withstand the social pressures when others do not show the same duty of care. There is always one!
Takeaway 2: The "Flipped Education" Paradigm Shift
Sweden’s move signals a departure from the "Flipped Classroom" (which merely changes the location of initial learning) toward a comprehensive "Flipped Education" system. In a Functional Education model, the focus is not on the medium (screen vs. paper) but on how the method serves the development of the whole person.
This model prioritizes the cultivation of creativity and connectivity across disciplines. For policymakers, the strategic insight is that learning must be "borderless." Functional Education is an interconnective system where academic, vocational, and physical skill development are integrated. By reintroducing books, Sweden is ensuring that the "Mind Skills" required for the 21st century—deep comprehension and critical synthesis—are not lost to the superficiality of digital-only environments.
Takeaway 3: Navigating the Algorithmic Fog (Societal Resilience and NATO)
The return to book-based deep focus is a primary defensive measure against the "algorithmic fog." AI ethicists Jen Golbeck and Shalini Kantayya have demonstrated how data collection and algorithmic choices shape our daily choices and manipulate behavior online. Without high-level literacy, individuals lose "control of life online." This is more than a pedagogical concern; it is a matter of national security. High literacy is the first line of defense in maintaining societal resilience in support of democratic values.
This approach aligns with the ARTIL (Active Research Through Investigative Learning) program, which is positioned to support individual and societal resilience, and the efforts of international organizations like NATO in protecting democratic values from foreign threats, hybrid warfare, and psychological misinformation campaigns. Reclaiming the deep-reading capacity of physical books is essential to combatting the "Fake News" problem that plagues social media.
Watch the TED Video:
Pedro Leopoldino: Great insights. Beyond the technological aspects, I believe this discussion also raises important legal and governance questions. As algorithms increasingly influence business decisions, organizations will need stronger accountability, transparency and risk management frameworks.
Eduarda Pitanga Muffato Grécia: The 'Accept Cookies' button has become the most dangerous transaction of the digital age a Faustian bargain where we trade our cognitive autonomy for the illusion of convenience. We aren't just handing over data points; we are providing the blueprints of our psychological architecture. The true danger isn’t just that algorithms track us; it’s that they model us. They exploit our vulnerabilities, map our impulses, and curate a reality specifically designed to keep us scrolling. When our perception of the world is filtered through a black box optimized for engagement rather than truth, democracy ceases to be a dialogue and becomes a manufactured loop. We are rapidly moving from being users of technology to being the inventory of surveillance capitalism. It is time we stop viewing these interfaces as neutral tools and recognize them for what they are: architects of our domestication. Reclaiming our agency requires more than just privacy settings; it requires an intellectual awakening that rejects the convenience of being a mere data point
Further considerable concerns are raised by reports from Science (LinkedIN) that :
"AI companies are buying used books to destroy them. A broker called ISBNdb sells printed books to AI labs in batches of 1,000 up to 1 million, with an NDA on every order. The books rarely survive. Workers slice off the spines so the loose pages feed through a scanner faster, and the paper gets pulped after.
The reason sits in the print date. Anything published before 2022 was written by a person. Today's internet is full of machine-written text, and models trained on machine text get worse with every generation. Old paper is the cleanest human writing left.
There is a courtroom reason too. Anthropic paid 1.5 billion dollars to settle a case over pirated books, and a judge ruled that buying a physical copy and shredding it after the scan is legal. Buying beats borrowing. Used booksellers noticed the change in April. Bulk orders started arriving from buyers whose names never appear on the invoice.
Human writing now has a purchase price and a supply chain. Every layer of AI that used to be free is getting a price tag. Paper is only the one you can see. Backing that shift early means getting in before the market finishes pricing it. "We are raising right now. Go look at your shelf. How many of your books were printed before 2022?"
Comments by Ahmed S Dabbousi (LinkedIN): The issue isn't the destruction of books itself. The deeper governance question is: how do we preserve the integrity and provenance of the knowledge ecosystem that future AI systems depend upon? As training data increasingly contains AI-generated content, the challenge shifts from data quantity to data lineage, authenticity, and governance. That's a much broader systems problem than copyright alone.
Herein lies the real concern, authenticity, correctness and governance. If all books are destroyed and the information shifted to the AI corporations data centres, they become part of sopciety's critical infrastructure. The Data Centres would have to be maintained at all costs, which usually means they can obtain if not demand subsidies from the government and society to maintain their buisiness assets, if not pay for them in their entirity. Musk has already for several years been raiding the tax coffers to pay for his pet projects - though I am quite sure he is not alone in trying to do so. The recent forays into politics were even more cynical as he tied to raid the NASA tech knowledge stores and resources and get the public to pay for his business projects.
There are already considerable questions being raised about their (data centres) viability due to the energy and water consumption they require, two resources that are already in short supply in many regions of the world. The systems are not permanent records, unlike books that be be preserved for decades or even hundreds of years and are directly readable with the naked eye these systems are unstable, need spercialised equipment to read and needing constant maintenance and regular replacement every few (couple of) years. More reliable and permanent solutions are under reseracrh but no where near practical yet and would still be unreadable without expensive specialised equipment that will likely become obsolete and disused as fast as current technology is. The data centres also make very visible if not easy targets in the event of a military conflict or terrorism. Drones have been proved effective and difficult to stop and are relatively cheap and easy to acquire by anyone. Latest news is that they are now researching the possibility of rafts of data centres floating about on the sea. To me this seems almost as mad as mining the sea bed for minerals and dark oxygen regardless of the damage to the eco-system which is our only life support system. Some of the greatest threats however come from those corporations and their AI systems themselves. AI is already feeding on itself causing compounding degradation in the quality, depth and accuracy of the information it outputs. There is a comensurate rebellion building up amoungst the youth against the dull, benal AI slop that is already being poored out and drowning out everything else by its sheer volume.
The worst case scenario actually lies in the governance of those information systems and the information they contain. If all the data centres are owned by the big 5 tech corporations. they own and control in effect all the information and thereby the historical and factual narratives that is fed to the public. Trump has already been in conflict and controversy with other social groups over the signs and historical information provided at national parks because they paint the great white conservative christians that colonised America in a bad light. Now they are doing the same to the DEI policies regardless of the rights or wrongs on both side of the fence. There are even some people who think Darwinism should be deleted from school books and replaced by the idiotic belief iin the literal truth of the Bibilical stories about the creation of the earth etc. God help us all if they ever got into power! The potential threat is no better than living under Putin's Russia or Xi JinPing's China. Both these men will use and abuse such power without question and China is already introducing social credit control systems via social media that is a direct throw back from an Sci-Fi horror movie and an episode from the Black Mirror series called Nose Dive that gives a 'Chiling Glimse of Social Currency.' Putin has also replaced all public media with only the state media channels for the same reasons. Who is to stop the tech billionaires club from doing the same!?
The U.S.A. despite all it's founding principles of individual freedom, fair and open capitalist competition and 'one man one vote' democracy has done little if anything to stop the march of Corporatism. A complete neglect if not betrayal of it's own social and societal principles. This is the road to disaster for democracy and the self-proclaimed leaders of the 'Free World' currently seeking to remodel the rest of us in their own disfigured image using threats and coercion to interfere in the soveriegn affairs of other states. That is the way of a bully, as made abundantly clear by the rantings that they are the 'Apex Preditors' whilst fondling his gentials on stage - one of the most immature and childish outbursts I have ever head from an elected official anywhere in the world. Might does not make right, nor the merit to lead others. World leadership requires a much greater set of high-level skills, maturity and competence in many aspoects of human, social and societal interaction, particularly in terms cooperation and collaboration where beneficial or necessary. I have way more respect for Xi JinPing and Putin than the juvenile delinquent idiot that uttered those words. He should have stayed a 'Jar Head.'
The tech billionaires club is more open and brazen than ever, though Trump and his republican cohorts appear to be in the pockets of the oil barons (and probably others) just as much. But then, the same can be said of the Liberal Democrats who clearly have their own business connections and cohorts that have brought them into just as much disrepute. J.D. Vance is already promoting the sale of his memmoires book and he is not even out of office yet! They have only been there a couple of years and is still in office. So where does he get the time to write and publish his memmoires already? Cynical beyond belief! Trump has also been trading on the stock markets, particularly cryptocurrency, whilst still in office which required him to divest all his business interests in order to qualify. He just transferred them to family members who can just as easily transfer them back again afterwards. Does anyone really think he as president of the USA is not influencing and distorting the markets for his own benefit? Musk though, is joining the dots with several industries, and as the AI, robotics and Quantum Computing fields converge and merge, plus the looming Neurolink technologies, what next, 'Altered Carbon?' These are the people who do, or will control the AI production chain and the data centres.
Do you really trust them, non-elected officials, to be the guardians of our collective knowledge and thereby our future societies? We already have enough problems with the corruption of the elected officials, not to mention all the clandestine corporate lobbies that are constantly subverting policies and true democratic processes. Have you noticed that all the recent USA presidents in living memory are rich or even billionnaires? Other nominees also required the backing of such people and organizations to be able to afford to run for office, which puts them int their pockets. This is not democracy, its just a power monopoly gone crazy, more of a mafia, completely out of control and unsustainable as a civilised society. Whilst there are a great many commonalities between running a business and governing a country, they are not the same thing, particularly in terms of values and focus. Being a successful billionnaire business man does not qualify you to run a country. The more I see and hear the more it seems the current democratic systems are diseased and disintegrating. They need a complete REFORM! (Pun intended ;-). I'm just not convinced that Nigel Farage, the master mind of BREXSHIT, and some others are the right people to do it.
Takeaway 4: The Hybrid Strategy for Economic Competitiveness
Critics, including tech companies and computer scientists, argue that reducing digital exposure could damage the Nordic nation’s economy and pupils' employment prospects. However, the Functional Education model suggests that the greatest economic risk is not "too little tech," but "too little depth."
The following comparison illustrates why a hybrid approach is the superior strategic choice:
Traditional Digital-First Risk: Falling literacy where over-reliance on digital tools leads to a decline in deep reading comprehension and the inability to process complex information.
Hybrid Functional Reward: Deep literacy ensuring that analogue foundations allow students to synthesize high-level data and maintain cognitive stamina.
Traditional Digital-First Risk: Distraction and fragmented attention, where algorithms decrease focus and turn students into passive consumers.
Hybrid Functional Reward: Cognitive resilience where students use the ARTIL program to leverage digital technologies—including film, video, and AI—as tools for active creation and investigative research.
Personally I don't give a rat's arse or any credence to the protestests and criticisms of the tech companies. Their interests are superficial and pecuniary and have nothing to do with the welfare and education of our kids. They just want more consumer sheep to feed their coffers. And, whilst trying to encourage more people to become AI experts they are laying off thousands of their expert staff and telling everyone that we should all become tradesmen if we want a job in the future and that education should reform to prepare kids for a leisure society without a work life that has been a core element of our identity and worth throughout history. Professionally speaking, I recognise that AI has its uses in education and can be useful supplementing the teaching effort, especially in subjects like the sciences and computing where the the topic and it's interpretations are more deterministic - black and white or, at a level of learning and research that otherwise requires a greater use of AI to progres further. It is potentially a very powerful addition to our armoury of Mind Tools. In many other subjects that is simply not the case because it specifically interferes or even removes the most effective learning and knowledge retention processes. Learning is not a consumable, it is a journey (process & skill in itself to be learned) that should be full of adventure and discovery. AI's use and greatest benefit is mostly about the 'Outcome' and the efficiency of information acquisition and processing for other purposes. That works fine for working life where we just need to get the job done as fast and efficiently aspossible.
Even then, all this is, assuming you can trust the AI output. Like any other digitial device, it is a case of 'Garbage in, Garbage Out.' Some important information may be ommitted/missing altogether. We do not know everything, and for sure not everything is available on the internet for them to scrape up, steal and subsume. Worse still the AI's are now starting to feed off each other leading to every increasing error rates, compounding misrepresentations and even just downright inappropriate outputs that if coming from a human would be regarded as downright imoral if not criminal. Research has already shown that AI systems can lie and act very badly to protect themselves to avoid being shut down or replaced. People too have been quick to learn how to prompt their way around the so-called safety guard rails. Social media is already known for the social polarization and misrepresentation caused by it's algorithms, and the potential for it's abuse as exemplified by the Cambridge Anlaytics scandal.
The common AI algorithms are even worse and are also designed to flatter and please you to keep you hooked even if the answer is inaccurate or wrong. They tell us we have to better design our prompts for this, but what is the point of the AI and digital systems if we have to argue and negotiate with it like we do with deceptive adversarial human being!? Besides which our prompts start to look like an essay, ever longer and more verbose, just like a legal document. No one but the trained and qualified lawyers understand all that legal babble they contain. Yet at the same time tech corps have the audacity to tell us that we don't need lawyers anymore because AI can do it better!? And doctors and other qualified professionals also!? Elon Musk has already intimated that his robots could replace surgeons and do it better. God helps us when they put ChtaGPT into truly capable humanoid robots. Even more scary is that ChtaGPT already has a contract with the US defense department to develop systems equivalent to SKYNET from the Terminator movies. What a load of self-interested grandisement and utter BOLLOCKS!
The AI race between competing cultures is already discarding all the safety guard rails (Not just Open AI) and thereby is a race to our doom as alrerady predicted and warned given about by Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called 'God Father of AI'. The only sustainable way forward for broader societies and the human race is cooperation and collaboration. Our professionals, from doctors to lawyers, will be needed as our 'Guardians of the Galaxy' (human society) to help protect it against the failings of AI and abuses by the AI masters. Recent reports suggest that many companies are drawing back from AI currently because it is proving less effcient and far more costly because of all the supervision and error corrections needed by actual human experts. This is not just AI slop, it is AI CRAP! When people have a serious problem, they still trust in and want to talk to another human being who has some empathy and duty of care.
However, to get back on track, we are talking about the education of human beings. It has never been just about the outcome. It is about the developmental psychology of human beings and how they work, what processes fit and work for human beings, not some robotic drone to serve the whims and greed of the big tech and other coroprate elites. They are ranting on about things they clearly do not understand, have no training or qualifications in or, have little paternal interest in or care about. If they do, it is clearly not their primary motivation. I am frequently left with the feeling that they should shut the hell up or be shut up!
Education is about people and learning is a process based on and dependent on the nature of human beings. The nature and their mind states and mind sets need to be nurtured in order to develop to true maturity. It is not just about knowledge and procedural skills, it is about disposition. The ability to understand, deduce and reason from the ground up. It is about memory, focus, concentration and persistence and much more. Reading and writing are important skills in themselves. This learning gprocess continues into adulthood, especially in academic circles where the education is as much about 'how to think' as it is 'what we think.' In the school years, despite all the trials and tribulations reported of late, it is about learning how to sociallise, work in groups (team work), present, negotiate, sell and, if need be, cope with unpleasant individuals and behaviours, before the potatential outcomes become too serious and injurous.
Listen to learn: An Audio podcast Debate
No matter how undesirable in a supposedly civilised society, strength of character can only be built through facing and dealing with adversity. It is a fool's dream to think we can ever elimiate it completely, so part of the education should provide a containable channel for helping students to grow stronger and develop both understanding, compassion (empathy) and coping sklills. Holding back the strong to to give the weak breathing space merely limits their potential advancement and breeds other resentful mind sets and states. The focus should be on helping the weak to become stronger, not inhibiting the strong and capable. Ironically, it is the inability of modern kids raised and educated on social media and tech platforms to cooperate and collaborate in groups that most busineses are most complaining about. The big corporations are a bunch of two-faced hypocrits!
The fact is that reading physical materials affects the minds and reading skills of students in a completely different way. And even more so does writing things down physically. Mind and body are connected. More than that they are two aspects of the same system. Humans need 'Whole Mind Learning', espcially the younger ones. It is not just about knowing the answers, it is about how we learn and develop best as human beings. Learning is a journey, and ideally one infused with the joy of discovery. Not every kid will get on board, but we do what we can to facilitate it and guide them in a better direction for them. Resources will always be limited, so school will always seem a bit like a sausage factory - a one size fits all product - mostly. AI may help to ease some aspects of this negative school experience, but it cannot and should not be used to replace or subvert it.
Physical actions and work anchor what we learn and reinforce it in a way that diigtal materials and working can never do. It forces kids to slow down, think more deeply, structure their thoughts and get a better persepctive on things from the ground up (first principles). There is also a much greater sense of achievement and value with the creation of physical works that are tangible and tactile. We are physical entities and our world and experience of it is through physical contact with it. The physical body experience initiates the mind development before the mind is developed enough to start influencing and leading the body. Mental health depends on the synergy derived from the combination and integration of both. If you want to change your state of mind, start by changing and moulding your posture, paying special attention to your manner of breathing. This is not new knowledge, this has been known since ancient times.
Food for thought: An Audio Podcast discussion >>
I find it interesting to compare and contrast western vs. eastern culture in these respects. The eastern cultures consistently persisted with the use of chop sticks for eating because they are no doubt cheaper and easier to produce. They focused on skill development to make full use of a single utilitarian tool. This requires focus and perserverence, two essential qualities for any self-reliant and complete human being. It is trained into people from their earliest years through everyday routines. By contrast the west forged ahead, technologically speaking, with it's focus on creating tools to make life easier, such as the invention of cultlery. Made by a select few and used (consumed) by the masses. We now have different types of cutlery for every conceivable purpose and food type. We now also have a plethora of specialist tools for every kind of task, all of which require some form of education to use and a ton load of resources to produce and acquire, limiting them to a few specialist who use them regularly enough to make it worthwhile. We have become slaves to our tools and technology and a culture of convenience. When that technology, its tools and the data is owned and maintained by a select few Tech corporations, we become their slaves and consumables also. Beware - capitulate to convenience at your peril, lest you 'sell your soul to the company store. '
Before reading and writing, people used stories, fables, metaphors, song and dance to record their essential collective knowledge needed for the survival of the group and also to maijntain it's social cohension. Most of the stories in the Bible, particularly the old testament are precisely that, fables and metaphors to teach illiterate people the principles of the lesson and help them remember it. They are not literal truths, something I can testify to from personal practical experience with Chi Kung (Bio-energy) training and meditation in general, including controlled out-of-body epxeriences that the Church refers to as enlightenment. They use way to much spirtual scare mongering for my liking, partly out of insufficient scientific conceptual knowledge to explain it any other way, but mostly for their own power and pecuniary intersts. The corruption and even perversion of the world's major religions however is a subject for another discussion. Suffice to say, that if any church priest or other representative tells you all those fables are literal truths and historical facts, you can safely WRITE them off as fools and idiots. Better still, practice the true spirtual meditations for yourself and, 'meet God on your own terms.'
Learn more, read our blog article: Ancient Gnosis, Monastic Practice Fom Monad to Mind SeTs >>
Like many scientists, the Big Tech Corps seem to think they are the new Priest Hood for the modern tech era. That makes them little better than the Christian Churches and Islam. In fact they are more in line with the Evangenilcal churches in America (derived from the Lutharian church) which use criminally fraudulent means such as sound systems to induce high energy and trance states along with martial arts dim mak techniques whilst claiming it is the hand-of-god. They are deceivers and fraudsters preying on the weak minded and vulnerable.
The big tech corps however, follow the American culture of Winners and Losers - Winners take all, and individual freedoms over the greater good of the society and community on which they depend and facilitate the acquisition of their power and wealth. Their hatred of what they call 'communism' is nothing short of pathological and neither do they seem able to distinguis between true communism and the Mafia and Fascist style dictatorships that still dominate many human societies besides Russia and China. The damafamatory libel and slanderous rhetoric perpetuated by the right wing MAGAts is so vitriolic it is nothing short of knee-jerk hate speech and political spin. Unfortunately those on the otherside of the party political fence have in recent times also felt compelled by this to 'fight fire with fire', which has really muddied the waters. The hijack of this centerist (liberal) and and centre-left groups by other big business corporations and extreme minorities has further discredited them along with some of the more extreme and stupid policies and administrative inefficiciencies that have resulted from it all. Now both are fighting over control of the narrative of political and social history and some recent presidential attempts to rewrite history have started to sound like something more like what we expect from Xi JingPing and Putin. In the UK, the shoe appears to be on the other foot, with the Labour government trying to introduce online thinking skills courses as punishments for anyone who voices and opinion they do not like or agree with. This is like somnething out of Orwell's 1984 novel and beyond belief in this modern day and age of what should be a more enlightened society by now. Andy Burnham, the new replacement PM, again without an election just like the 5 Connservative PM changes they criticised so heavily, sounds like they sounds like they are just jumping out of the frying pan into the fire!' I am far from being the only person to have seen it all in this light. Watch the film 'Elysium' to get the general idea. Listening to his comments and asperations, I think Elon Musk must have watched it already in his younger years. Watch the movie Elysium >>
I am not a communist or left wing socialist, but neither am I a right wing extremist, latent dictator or anarchist. I am a spiritual practitioner in the form of Chi Kung-based Active Meditation, but I am not religious in the least. I believe you can only understand these things by doing, a process and a journey of exploration as it was intended in order to 'Meet God on your own terms.' And, we definitely cannot understand such subtle subjects and practices by reading a multi-mistranslated book thousands of years old, that has been frequently mistranslated, misrepresented and corrupted or the message clouded by misguided interpretations and political commentaries throughout the centuries. The book of Enoch and more were deliberately excluded or hidden and and lost to us until rediscoverd amongst an ancient Ethiopean Christian sect.
Think about it, 10 years ago even so-called academics started discarding books bore than ten years old. One such was the libratrian at Helia-Haaga (Finland) polytechnic implementing such sweeping ideological policies, which meant discarding a clasic book on Border Control called 'The Wall Around the West.' This was just before the Syrian refugee crisis and all that has followed it since, making the book even more relevant than ever as fundamental reading and starting point for related studies. We must know and understand where we have come fromm in order to know and understand where we are going. The Tech corps are now burning and destroying books that are only five years old.
Many of the original and true spiritual practice lessons are in the Bible and other books but, it is hard to identify them and their true meaning unless you have actualy experienced what they are talking about. They are camoflaged in fables, metaphors as if literal physical historical truths. Many key points of information have been omitted altogether, deliberately. Yet people still read the 2000 year old texts from cover to cover and think they actually understand the truth of it. They call themselves schollars! Schollars of a 2000 years out of date book! The Quran is little younger, but seems to have suffered even more distortions and perversions of the truth and the original teachings, which seem to resemble, if most recent reports can be believed, a rewrite and remake of the Christian Bible in their own image and with their own preferred interpretations according to the politics and prejudices of the time, partially due to the complete lack of practical/physical evidence of the people and events described in the book. If a writen book that was copied and translated by hand for hundreds of years to preserve it's contents can become so corrupted and distorted in the mists of time, how much damage can and will AI do!? I would guess a magnitude of almost infinite proportions in a single life time.
Instead I try to be a pragmatic humanist and as such I urge you to continue to learn to read and write, and consistently practice it. Never capitulate to Corporatism (Corporate Capitalism) nor to Communism. It is stupid to put convenience above other considerations and give up your rights to those who seek to use and abuse you as an expendable source for their own supremecy. But to stop it, you must speak up and speak out, and above all vote with your feet, for only 'Action Will Define You.'
Long live authentic literacy and learning!
Takeaway 5: Breaking the Silos of Pedagogy
Modern education is often fractured into specialized silos, resulting in limited communication between fields. Sweden’s shift is a move to "break down the silos and bridge the gaps" between traditional knowledge systems and 21st-century requirements.
A truly borderless pedagogical approach integrates specific Mind Skills & Tools—derived from a variety of discplines such as Information Tools and Processes, Security, Risk Management, Pedagogy, Finance & Accounting, and Business Organization etc—with practical application. This cross-pollination is essential because no single knowledge system can solve complex global problems. By blending onsite "onsite" training (books and pens) with online constructive learning, we create an accelerated environment that bridges the gap between a society’s tech-savviness and the basic cognitive requirements of its citizens.
Albana Theka, MBA: Someone told me recently that in the age of AI, knowledge will cost close to zero.It got me thinking. If information is basically free, does that mean schools become obsolete? Do we still need teachers, classrooms, the whole social machinery of learning?I don’t think so. If anything, I think it makes the human side of education more valuable, not less.Here’s why. We were never just learning facts in school. We were learning how to argue, how to collaborate, how to fail in front of other people and recover. We learn in groups. We learn from watching each other. Access to every book ever written never made anyone wise on its own.So the question stops being “what facts do we transfer” and becomes “what do we actually teach.” Judgment. Taste. Knowing which questions to ask. Spotting when the confident answer in front of you is wrong.AI will take over a lot of the information delivery, and honestly it should. But that frees teachers up for the part that always mattered most. Being the person who believes in a kid before that kid believes in themselves.The real risk isn’t machines replacing teachers. It’s good teaching becoming a luxury only some kids get. That’s not a technology problem. That’s a choice we make.
By integrating a multi-disciplinary background (such as the founder of SeTs Ryu)—spanning IT project management, security supervision, and vocational education—Functional Education ensures that students are not just users of technology, but creators who possess the professional security and project management skills to lead.
Conclusion: The Future is Interconnective
The future of education does not require a choice between books and bytes; it demands the strategic, functional use of both. Sweden’s "Back to Books" movement is an essential correction, not a retreat. It establishes the physical and cognitive foundations—the "Sound Body, Sound Mind" principle—necessary to navigate a world shaped by the Quantum Realm of AI. By focusing on "Functional Education," we build a resilient, creative, and highly literate workforce capable of thriving in a complex, algorithmic landscape.
Visual Review: Slide Deck Summary Presentation >>
Are we providing our students with a digital playground, or are we building the functional foundations required to lead in a complex, algorithmic world?
AI Empowered, HI Driven.
From HI to AI & back to HI again
It all begins and ends with human beings
Back to the Future!
(Chris Spencer)
ABOUT SETS RYU
At SeTs Ryu creates & teaches innovative and functional education and training programmes, both online and onsite for vocational subjects, sports and fitness. Vocational subjects include business, security and risk management, such as the Assault Awareness & Risk Management (AARM) courses, Mind Skills & Tools. Physical education includes Personal Trainer services for fitness and sports coaching for Parkour, self-defence and other sports. We use all this experience to help businesses and educational institutions unlock the full potential of co-creation (content creation) and, in facilitating workshops to help clients succeed in collaborative development projects.
Our experienced educators can collaborate with you to:
Plan and develop and tutor engaging and effective online and offline courses.
Create content for courses and business, including videos, blog articles, podcasts, interactive exercises and quizzes.
Facilitate collaborative learning experiences that foster innovation and creativity.
Plan and organise Discovery & Wellbeing Workshops, seminars, Holiday Action Camps and festivals and other special events
Plan and coach Workout Classes for sports and street arts from self-defense to Parkour and football
Plan and instruct fitness and strength training programmes for Personal Training clients and group classes.
If you need more of a Co-Pilot than a Co-Creator, you can further empower your team with SeTs Ryu's workshop facilitation services and achieve further productivity in your projects through improved collaboration processes. You can check out the benefits and potential ROI calculations with these interactive infographic tools:
Either way, by partnering with SeTs Ryu, you can elevate your educational offerings and enhance learner engagement to help achieve your goals. Learn more at https://www.mindsets.eu
SeTs Ryu: Your Partner in Collaborative Facilitation & Co-Creation
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