We start from a recent event that occurred in the Swedish elementary education system. After decades of investing in a public education policy based on the use of digital and virtual tools – which has made the country a global reference in the sector – the Swedish government is now striving to convince the current generation of students to resume their studies by reading textbooks. The paper ones, that is. And it is worth remembering that they have always been efficient, universal and long-lasting educational technologies. Books are a printed technology, portable, recyclable, and memory supports. They are a reversible reading device, actors in great revolutions in knowledge.

In short: the Swedish government has realized that the intellectual and cognitive advantages gained from using good old books are essentially different from those gained by tablets and smartphones, and cannot be abandoned.

In reality, both technologies – the ancient one and the recently discovered one – are distinct and efficient ways of educating the senses and sensibilities. But they are not necessarily conflicting. The so-called Innovation and Communication Technologies (ICTs) cannot be considered unstoppable, nor do they need to be antagonistic to old techniques, such as the use of books and blackboards. They can and should coexist, to offer a richer, more interesting and universal educational framework.

Using the Swedish example, we can historically analyze this issue from two distinct and complementary points of view: the sociopolitical and the temporal.

The sociopolitical aspect

The sociopolitical condition of unrestricted acceptance of ICTs in educational processes, especially in schools, requires criticism. ICTs are composed of sets of resources integrated by hardware (computers, tablets, smartphones, etc.), software (applications, teaching platforms, activity management platforms, social networks, video classes, etc.) and telecommunications infrastructure elements, such as networks and automation of techno-bureaucratic processes. All of these elements have been presented as inevitable in schooling, deserving of large investments.

However, such unified products do not work or are justified when it is realized that they are entangled in a sociotechnical network that, in practice, alienates groups legitimately interested in the educational benefits provided by new technologies.

This set of exclusionary mechanisms is manifested, for example, in the actions of educational materials companies, large big-tech corporations and also political manipulations. All, in their own way, are interested in the dividends provided by new investments in this sector. Such dividends include everything from profits earned from owning shares in the financial market to participation in large public management plans related to education. These are often well accepted by civil society due to the relevance of the topic, despite the involvement of governments in processes that are in fact private or have little connection with the public interest.

Therefore, there is no naivety in the widespread dissemination of the benefits that ICTs provide in the education of students. Students who end up being led by investors in this new market to become primarily a vast consumer market – fostering the idea that books and reading should be forgotten on the shelf.

The temporal aspect

Regarding the temporal condition, we see the introduction of innovations in society surrounded by cultural complexities that are not always discussed. We naturalize the idea that the “new” is beneficial and intrinsically well-intentioned.

It is interesting to note the idea of ​​immediate social benefit that the novelty carries, coinciding with a historical process born in the techno-scientific society of the 19th century, and which begins to present industrial products as inventions that glorify their inventors (in fact, the owners of their patents), always announcing the future under the aegis of progress.

Historically in Western society, the confrontation between the “new” and the “old” transforms temporality into something linear, ignoring generational divides and the political condition of discussions about the technological novelty of the moment.

Innovation is a meeting between different generations that, in culture, engage in a political battle over their advantages and disadvantages. The permanence of tradition and the change in social practices require careful observation of all the “selective versions” of the meanings of technology operated and reproduced in this dispute.

The history of innovations is the history of social relations in the struggle for creativity. Some have the power to capitalize on and reproduce it, believing that they are doing “good”. Others appear as retrograde when they criticize the novelty that immediately throws into limbo practices, actions, gestures, creations and feelings, which were also once innovative, but which are no longer valued today.

Precisely for this reason, the school can and should be a historical space that functions as a storehouse of ideas and technological solutions, both old and new.

Therefore, ICTs are not necessarily the most efficient innovative school enterprise. They are not synonymous with the only available solutions to improve the educational efficiency of Brazilian schools. Even though there is currently a great effort to ideologically convince people of this.

Educational reforms are technological battles

According to the Theory of Sociotechnical Networks (TST), there is an interrelationship between social networks and technological infrastructures, as they are interconnected and interdependent dimensions producing social relationships that shape and are shaped by human activities interspersed with their technologies.

In this way, the theme “technological innovations” takes on a historical, collective, contextual and political character.

The school is an institution integrated into the processes of propagating perceptions about what constitutes technological innovation. And, therefore, the school is not a space for merely passively receiving new, supposedly innovative products. Any school has the power to negotiate what it understands as beneficial to its operation. Sometimes it can embrace the novelty. Other times, it can and should disregard it, precisely because the school plays an active role in sociotechnical networks.

Thus, from this perspective, there is no fixed definition of what constitutes the best innovative technology in education. This idea is the result of contextual and changing interactions between humans and their inventions, which may or may not generate reciprocal interdependence. Technology is a social, cultural and technical component that depends on the contexts and relationships of the actors involved.

In this way, the most conservative subjects are called “archaic”, because they are in struggle, negotiating meanings and, often, questioning the selectivity of technical choices. If there is a social dynamic between different technologies, it is understandable that the school community (teachers, students, administrators) conspire between engagements and resistance, generating meanings about what should be educational technological innovation. It is worth considering that every pedagogical reform presents this technological struggle, because in the school space the layers of time and the validity of old technologies are always visible.

The technology of books

Textbooks are technologies that have been endorsed for more than three centuries as components of knowledge and legitimate repositories of culture. The blackboard, which is the note board that teachers openly use in the classroom, has enabled the socialized, collective and synchronous teaching of the masses. The blackboard itself is a technological device that facilitates the collective perception of republican ethics, for example.

It may seem contradictory, but its persistent presence to this day reinforces its success as a school technology. Although the strength of ICTs as new socio-technical devices is recognized, acting in the education of large contingents of students, it is worth remembering that universally recognized universities such as Oxford or Harvard continue to offer Magna Classes in the education of their elites.

This text does not intend to be reactionary in the face of ICTs. It merely intends to provoke reflection on their supposed “inevitabilities”. The strength of this idea cannot, for example, disregard the importance of physical libraries just because all of humanity’s knowledge can be accessed on digital devices.

By understanding educational technologies historically, we see a more complex reality. The success of certain innovations, and not others, is related to the possibilities of a pact made in the social order. The possibility of a new technology breaking away from the traditional one depends on the way in which the permanence of the former is reproduced, and on how the social acceptance of the new devices proposed by the latter occurs.

Thinking about technology in a historical way allows us to ask, for example: why should a teacher accept all this technological paraphernalia born with planned obsolescence, dressed as pure consumer goods, as a new teaching tool?

Author Bio: Katya Braghini is Professor/Researcher of the PPG in Education: History, Politics, Society (PPG-EHPS) at Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP)