She was deeply worried, she confided, about her school’s decision to shift students over from textbooks to laptops and digital devices.

Many other members of the staff in that large, second-level school had voiced similar concerns, but they weren’t being listened to, she said. Screen-based teaching and learning was coming in, and that was that.

We’ve had the shock over GROK. We’ve read about and listened to the very deep concerns being voiced about the potentially negative effects of social media and screen-dependence on children. There is an enormous amount of research underpinning that anxiety.

Yet here is the Irish government steadily, diligently, replacing textbooks, pencils, and copybooks with laptops.

Meanwhile, and ironically, traditional textbooks are seeing a resurgence in several traditionally progressive countries across Europe which are now steadily reducing emphasis on digital education.

Norway is restricting the use of screens in education for young students due to declining results in reading and numeracy.

Denmark too has stepped back from digital learning, and Sweden has abruptly and comprehensively changed its education policy, and spent millions bringing back traditional printed textbooks.

It’s an issue that Darren O’Rourke, Sinn Féin’s spokesman on education, has had some experience of – he commented recently that other countries around Europe have increasingly found that an over-reliance on screens not only harms concentration and results in poorer levels of literacy and handwriting, but, it is........

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