Features

We handed every child a screen and called it progress. Now what?

Published

1 month ago

2026/03/18

Sahan Weerasooriya

SERIES: THE GREAT DIGITAL RETHINK: PART I OF V

The Great Digital Bet

Cast your mind back to the late 1990s. Technology evangelists, in government, in schools, in Silicon Valley boardrooms, were making a very confident prediction: the classroom of the future would be digital, and that future was essentially already here. Wire the schools. Buy the computers. Train the teachers to press the right buttons. And stand back as a generation of turbo-charged, digitally-empowered learners leapfrogs every educational problem ever known to humanity.

It was, to be fair, an intoxicating idea. Who wouldn’t want to modernise education? Who could argue against progress? And so governments around the world, rich and poor, north and south, opened their wallets and signed their contracts. Phase One of the Great Digital Experiment had begun, and very few people were allowed to ask awkward questions.

From Computer Labs to Pocket Supercomputers

Through the 2000s, the experiment scaled up. We moved from shared computer labs to 1:1 device programmes, a laptop or tablet for every child, like some kind of annual prize-giving that never ended. Vendors introduced the irresistibly catchy notion of ‘digital natives,’ a generation supposedly born knowing how to swipe, and, therefore, desperately in need of classrooms that matched their wired-up lives. And, gradually, quietly, commercial platforms began mediating almost everything that happened between a teacher and a student.

The research, even then, was sending mixed signals. OECD data showed that more personal screen time was not automatically producing better learners. Students who used computers heavily in school were not streaking ahead in reading or maths. But these inconvenient findings were absorbed into a simple narrative: the problem was not the technology, it was how teachers were using it. More training. Better platforms. Upgraded hardware. The answer, invariably, was more.

‘The pen is mightier than the keyboard’,

a slogan that turned a psychology study into a revolution in educational policy.

Then the Pandemic Happened

And then came COVID-19, and suddenly every school in the world was forced to discover whether digital education actually worked when it had no analogue alternative. The answer, for most children, was: not very well. Schools closed, screens opened, and learning largely ground to a halt, not because the technology failed, but because education, it turned out, is stubbornly, irreducibly human. What worked was teachers who knew their students, relationships built over time, the unquantifiable texture of a real classroom. A Zoom rectangle, however crisp the resolution, is not a substitute.

The pandemic accelerated digitalisation to a degree nobody had planned for and exposed its limits simultaneously. UNESCO’s own global monitoring report, not exactly a hotbed of anti-technology radicalism, sounded the alarm in 2023, issuing what amounted to a polite institutional apology: technology in education must be a tool that serves learners, not an end in itself. Translation: we may have overdone it.

The Evidence Catches Up

The science, meanwhile, had been accumulating quietly. A widely cited study showed that students who take notes by hand retain and understand information better than those typing on laptops, not because handwriting is some mystical ancient craft, but because the physical slowness forces you to process, summarise and think, while typing tempts you into verbatim transcription. Your fingers race across the keyboard and your brain mostly stays home.

At the scale of entire school systems, OECD analysis of PISA 2022 results, which showed historic declines in reading and mathematics across member countries, drew a striking curve: moderate use of digital devices is associated with better outcomes, but heavy use, especially for leisure during school time, correlates with lower performance. Not a little lower. Substantially lower. And this held true even after accounting for students’ socioeconomic backgrounds. In other words, digital distraction is an equal-opportunity problem.

PISA 2022 also produced some of the most dismal reading and maths scores seen in decades across wealthy nations. Was technology entirely to blame? Almost certainly not. But policymakers looking for something tangible to point at, and something they could actually change before the next election, had found their answer.

The Revolt of the Sensible

Finland, long the world’s favourite education success story, passed legislation in 2025 restricting mobile phone use in schools. Phones are now generally prohibited during lessons unless a teacher grants specific permission. Sweden went further still, announcing a full national ban, phones collected at the start of the school day and returned at dismissal, to take effect in 2026. The Swedes had already begun quietly rolling back their earlier enthusiasm for digital devices in preschools, reintroducing books and handwriting after noticing that children’s reading comprehension was suffering. Australia’s Queensland state had already launched its ‘away for the day’ policy, extending the ban to break times as well as lessons. We do not yet know how other wealthy, technologically advanced countries will respond to this challenge, but they are undoubtedly watching the pioneers of de-digitalisation with close attention.

These are not technophobic, backwards-looking nations. Finland and Sweden sit at the very top of every global education ranking. They have the infrastructure, the teacher quality and the research capacity to make considered decisions. What they have decided, after three decades of enthusiastic investment in digital education, is that smartphones in the hands of children during school hours are doing more harm than good. That is a significant statement from people who know what they are talking about.

The Two-Speed World

Here is where things become genuinely uncomfortable for the international education community. While many rich countries like Finland, Sweden and Australia are scaling back, vast swathes of the world are still scaling up. Across parts of South Asia, Africa and Latin America, and in pockets of the Global North that never quite caught up, governments are signing major contracts for tablet programmes and AI tutoring tools. They are, in good faith, doing what wealthy countries told them to do 30 years ago: invest in technology and watch the learning happen.

The people selling them these systems are not pointing to the Nordic retreat.

The multilateral organisations and development banks financing their ed-tech purchases have been slow to update their models. And so the world is now running two parallel education experiments simultaneously:

some rich countries are de-digitalising, while everyone else is still trying to digitalise in the first place. The disparity is not merely ironic, it raises serious questions about who sets the agenda for global education reform, and whose children bear the cost of getting it wrong. While Finland retreats from the classroom screen, others are still signing the contracts that will fill theirs.

What This Series Is About

Over the next four articles, this column will trace this story across every level of education, from primary classrooms where six-year-olds are learning cursive again in Stockholm, to universities where academics are requiring handwritten examinations partly to outwit AI essay-generators. We will look at the evidence honestly, without either the breathless optimism that launched the digital revolution or the nostalgic panic now driving some of the backlash.

We will also ask the question that international education policy rarely pauses to ask: when the wealthy world discovers that an experiment has not gone quite as planned, who bears the cost of correction, and who is still being sold the original experiment at full price?

De-digitalisation is not a confession. It is, at best, a mid-course correction by systems with the luxury of one. The real question is what we owe the rest of the world, which hasn’t had that luxury yet.

SERIES ROADMAP

Part I: From Ed-Tech Enthusiasm to De-Digitalisation (this article) | Part II: Phones, Pens & Early Literacy in Primary Schools | Part III: Attention, Algorithms & Adolescents in Secondary Education | Part IV: Universities, AI & the Return of the Handwritten Exam | Part V: A Critical Theory of Educational De-Digitalisation

(The writer, a senior Chartered Accountant and professional banker, is Professor at SLIIT, Malabe. The views and opinions expressed in this article are personal.)

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Features

Political violence stalking Trump administration

Published

2 hours ago

2026/04/30

Sahan Weerasooriya

A scene that unfolded during the shooting incident at the recent White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington. (BBC)

It would not be particularly revelatory to say that the US is plagued by ‘gun violence’. It is a deeply entrenched and widespread malaise that has come in tandem with the relative ease with which firearms could be acquired and owned by sections of the US public, besides other causes.

However, a third apparent attempt on the life of US President Donald Trump in around two and a half years is both thought-provoking and unsettling for the defenders of democracy. After all, whatever its short comings the US remains the world’s most vibrant democracy and in fact the ‘mightiest’ one. And the US must remain a foremost democracy for the purpose of balancing and offsetting the growing power of authoritarian states in the global power system, who are no friends of genuine representational governance.

Therefore, the recent breaching of the security cordon surrounding the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington at which President Trump and his inner Cabinet were present, by an apparently ‘Lone Wolf’ gunman, besides raising issues relating to the reliability of the security measures deployed for the President, indicates a notable spike in anti-VVIP political violence in particular in the US. It is a pointer to a strong and widespread emergence of anti-democratic forces which seem to be gaining in virulence and destructiveness.

The issues raised by the attack are in the main for the US’ political Right and its supporters. They have smugly and complacently stood by while the extremists in their midst have taken centre stage and begun to dictate the course of Right wing politics. It is the political culture bred by them that leads to ‘Lone Wolf’ gunmen, for instance, who see themselves as being repressed or victimized, taking the law into their own hands, so to speak, and perpetrating ‘revenge attacks’ on the state and society.

A disproportionate degree of attention has been paid particularly internationally to Donald Trump’s personality and his eccentricities but such political persons cannot be divorced from the political culture in which they originate and have their being. That is, “structural” questions matter. Put simply, Donald Trump is a ‘true son’ of the Far Right, his principal support base. The issues raised are therefore for the President as well as his supporters of the Right.

We are obliged to respect the choices of the voting public but in the case of Trump’s election to the highest public position in the US, this columnist is inclined to see in those sections that voted for Trump blind followers of the latter who cared not for their candidate’s suitability, in every relevant respect, and therefore acted irrationally. It would seem that the Right in the US wanted their candidate to win by ‘hook or by crook’ and exercise power on their behalf.

By making the above observations this columnist does not intend to imply that voting publics everywhere in the world of democracy cast their vote sensibly. In the case of Sri Lanka, for example, the question could be raised whether the voters of the country used their vote sensibly when voting into office the majority of Executive Presidents and other persons holding high public office. The obvious answer is ‘no’ and this should lead to a wider public discussion on the dire need for thoroughgoing voter education. The issue is a ‘huge’ one that needs to be addressed in the appropriate forums and is beyond the scope of this column.

Looking back it could be said that the actions of Trump and his die-hard support base led to the Rule of Law in the US being undermined as perhaps never before in modern times. A shaming moment in this connection was the protest march, virtually motivated by Trump, of his supporters to the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021, with the aim of scuttling the presidential poll result of that year. Much violence and unruly behaviour, as known, was let loose. This amounted to denigrating the democratic process and encouraging the violent take over of the state.

In a public address, prior to the unruly conduct of his supporters, Trump is on record as blaring forth the following: ‘We won this election and we won by a landslide’, ‘We will stop the steal’, ‘We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen’, ‘If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.’

It is plain to see that such inflammatory utterances could lead impressionable minds in particular to revolt violently. Besides, they should have led the more rationally inclined to wonder whether their candidate was the most suitable person to hold the office of President.

Unfortunately, the latter process was not to be and the question could be raised whether the US is in the ‘safest pair of hands’. Needless to say, as events have revealed, Donald Trump is proving to be one of the most erratic heads of state the US has ever had.

However, the latest attempt on the life of President Trump suggests that considerable damage has been done to the democratic integrity of the US and none other than the President himself has to take on himself a considerable proportion of the blame for such degeneration, besides the US’ Far Right. They could be said to be ‘reaping the whirlwind.’

It is a time for soul-searching by the US Right. The political Right has the right to exist, so the speak, in a functional democracy but it needs to take cognizance of how its political culture is affecting the democratic integrity or health of the US. Ironically, the repressive and chauvinistic politics advocated by it is having the effect of activating counter-violence of the most murderous kind, as was witnessed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Continued repressive politics could only produce more such incidents that could be self-defeating for the US.

Some past US Presidents were assassinated but the present political violence in the country brings into focus as perhaps never before the role that an anti-democratic political culture could play in unraveling the gains that the US has made over the decades. A duty is cast on pro-democracy forces to work collectively towards protecting the democratic integrity and strength of the US.

Features

22nd Anniversary Gala …action-packed event

Published

2 hours ago

2026/04/30

Sahan Weerasooriya

The Skyliners: Shanaka Viswakula (bass), Mario Ranasuriya (lead guitar), Daryl D'Souza (keyboards) and Kushmin Balasuriya (drums)

The Editor-in-Chief of The Sri Lankan Anchorman, a Toronto-based monthly, celebrating Sri Lankan community life in Canada, is none other than veteran Sri Lankan journalist Dirk Tissera, who moved to Canada in 1997. His wife, Michelle, whom he calls his “tower of strength”, is the Design Editor.

According to reports coming my way, the paper has turned out to be extremely popular in Toronto.

In fact, The Sri Lankan Anchorman won a press award in Toronto for excellence in editorial content and visual presentation.

However, the buzz in the air in Canada, right now, is The Sri Lankan Anchorman’s 22nd Anniversary Gala, to be held on Friday, 12 June, 2026, at the J&J Swagat Banquet Convention Centre, in Toronto.

An action-packed programme has been put together for the night, featuring some of the very best artistes in the Toronto scene.

The Skylines, who are classified as ‘the local musical band in Toronto’, will headline the event.

Dirk Tissera and wife Michelle: Supporting Sri Lanka-Canada community events, in Toronto, since launching The Anchorman
in 2002

They have performed and backed many legendary Sri Lanka singers.

According to Dirk, The Skylines can belt out a rhythm with gusto … be it Western, Sinhala or Tamil hits.

Also adding sparkle to the evening will be the legendary Fahmy Nazick, who, with his smooth and velvety vocals, will have the crowd on the floor.

Fahmy who was a household name, back in Sri Lanka, will be flying down from Virginia, USA.

He has captivated audiences in Sri Lanka, the Middle East and North America, and this will be his fourth visit to Toronto – back by popular demand,

Cherry DeLuna, who is described by Dirk as a powerhouse, also makes her appearance on stage and is all set to stir up the tempo with her cool and easy delivery.

“She’s got a great voice and vocal range that has captivated audiences out here”, says Dirk.

Chamil Welikala, said to be one of the hottest DJs in town, will be spinning his magic … in English, Sinhala, Tamil and Latin.

Both Jive and Baila competitions are on the cards among many other surprises on the night of 12 June.

This is The Anchorman’s fifth annual dance in a row – starting from 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 – and both Dirk and Michelle, and The Anchorman, have always produced elegant social events in Toronto.

“We intend to knock this one out of the park,” the duo says, adding that Western music and Sinhala and Tamil songs is something they’ve always delivered and the crowd loves it.

“We have always supported Sri Lanka-Canada community events, in Toronto, since launching The Anchorman, in 2002, and we intend to keep it that way.”

No doubt, there will be a large crowd of Sri Lankans, from all communities, turning up, on 12 June, to support Dirk, Michelle and The Anchorman.

Features

Face Pack for Radiant Skin

Published

2 hours ago

2026/04/30

Sahan Weerasooriya

* Apple and Orange:

Blend a few apple and orange pieces together. Add to it a pinch of turmeric and one tablespoon of honey. Apply it to the face and neck and rinse off after 30 minutes. This face pack is suitable for all skin types.

According to experts, apple is one of the best fruits for your skin health with Vitamin A, B complex and Vitamin C and minerals, while, with the orange peel, excessive oil secretion can be easily balanced.

* Mango and Curd:

Ripe mango pulp, mixed with curd, can be rubbed directly onto the skin to remove dirt and cleanse clogged pores. Rinse off after a few minutes.

Yes, of course, mango is a tasty and delicious fruit and this is the mango season in our part of the world, and it has extra-ordinary benefits to skin health. Vitamins C and E in mangoes protect the skin from the UV rays of the sun and promotes cell regeneration. It also promotes skin elasticity and fights skin dullness and acne, while curd, in combination, further adds to it.

* Grapes and Kiwi:

Take a handful of grapes and make a pulp of it. Simultaneously, take one kiwi fruit and mash it after peeling its skin. Now mix them and add some yoghurt to it. Apply it on your face for few minutes and wash it off.

Here again experts say that kiwi is the best nutrient-rich fruit with high vitamin C, minerals, Omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin E, while grapes contain flavonoids, which is an antioxidant that protects the skin from free radical damage. This homemade face pack acts as a natural cleanser and slows down the ageing process.