Paperless classroom causes digital dementia

Ørestad High School in Copenhagen wants to stop using printed material altogether in classes and confine itself to the use of electronic media. The daily Nordschleswiger doesn't think much of the idea: "Is it possible for information to be lodged in the brain in this way for any longer than the next exam? Can young people who leap from one digital snippet to the next, from an Internet clip to a text message and from there to a tweet, still understand long, coherent texts and write them themselves? The buzzword digital dementia is making the rounds, and ever more professors are despairing because none of their students read books any more, and none of them are capable of writing decent term papers. ... Schools have the job of conveying our culture. That includes teaching students how to use what Gutenberg's invention in 1440 made possible: the book. Bold concepts like the one presented by the school in Copenhagen can be a sensible step. But not dispensing entirely with books."

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