Opinion — Replacing school books with films, TV, video games and computers

The proposal that schools should abandon books in favour of films, television, video games and computers rests on a single complaint: that pupils find reading dull. I disagree with it almost entirely, since screens are valuable additions to a lesson but poor substitutes for the printed page.

It would be foolish to deny what screen media do well. A documentary can show the scale of a battlefield or the inside of a living cell in seconds, where a paragraph would struggle, and interactive simulations let pupils carry out chemistry experiments too dangerous or costly for a real laboratory. Well-designed games give instant feedback, which keeps weaker learners trying. For children who read slowly, such tools can be the difference between following a topic and falling behind the class. Used this way, technology brings abstract ideas to life and deserves a regular place in the timetable.

Stopping book-based teaching altogether is another matter. Reading is not merely a way of delivering content but a skill in its own right: it trains pupils to sustain concentration for long periods, to follow an extended argument and to build the vocabulary on which every other subject depends. A film sets its own pace and supplies its own images, whereas a reader must pause, reread and imagine, and that effort is precisely where deep understanding is formed. The claim that books are boring is therefore a reason to teach reading better, not to give it up, just as nobody would drop mathematics because pupils find it hard. Screens, moreover, bring constant digital distractions into the lesson, and many schools could not afford a device for every child in any case.

In short, I accept that visual and interactive media should be used more widely, but only to supplement rather than replace books. A school that removed reading to keep pupils entertained would be trading their long-term ability to learn for a few minutes of attention.