When crafts teacher Christina Norgren Arnesson returned to the teaching profession after 20 years, she noticed a big difference in the students. Their knowledge and skills had deteriorated significantly in things they were able to do during the 1990s, Vi Lärare reports.
She warns that students, among other things, cannot handle things like using scissors, tying a knot or threading a needle.
– I have students in the fifth grade who cut at a level where preschoolers used to be, says textile teacher Christina Norgren Arnesson to the magazine Vi Lärare.
During the past ten years, the deterioration has gone even faster, she believes.
Gets approval from other teachers
When Christina uploaded a picture of a piece of fabric, which a fifth grade student had tried to cut straight, to a teacher’s group on Facebook, she quickly got the support of other teachers who commented on her picture.
“Recognition!”, “Scary!”, “You become afraid of the dark”, “Sweating just thinking about this”, wrote some teachers with similar experiences.
– It was obvious that the student did not know how to cut, a skill that he should have acquired much earlier, she tells the newspaper.
– It’s sad, you get depressed. It is about a basic ability, an everyday knowledge, which they no longer have, she continues.
A deterioration of fine motor skills
Christina believes that the students’ fine motor skills have deteriorated. Something that, according to her, is due to the fact that students today start with screen time “already in the pram”, and that children do crafts to the same extent as before.
– All the hours in front of the screens is an important explanation. Of course, the children play many fun and creative computer games, but they lose the three-dimensionality.
– It is the lack of quantity training that is the big problem. It takes hundreds of hours of practice to develop good fine motor skills.