Some schools have replaced printed textbooks entirely with tablets and laptops.

Nowadays some schools do not use paper books anymore and give tablets or laptops to their students instead. This change has several benefits, but it also causes some difficulties.

The main advantage is that one device can hold all the books for every subject. Students do not need to carry a heavy bag every day, and the school does not need to buy new books every few years, because the files can be updated online. This saves a lot of money and also saves paper, which is better for the environment.

Another advantage is that digital materials are more interesting. A tablet can show videos, play audio for language lessons, and give exercises that check the answer immediately. Weak students can repeat a difficult part as many times as they need, and this is not possible with a printed book.

On the other hand, tablets can distract students very easily. When a child has the internet in front of him, he can open games or social media during the lesson, and the teacher cannot control twenty screens at the same time. In addition, if the battery finishes or the internet does not work, the student cannot study at all.

Finally, not every family can buy a device at home. Some students have to share one computer with their brothers and sisters, so they cannot do their homework easily.

In conclusion, replacing books with tablets makes learning cheaper and more modern, but it also creates problems with concentration and with equality between students.

A number of schools have now abandoned printed textbooks altogether in favour of tablets and laptops. The change brings genuine benefits, but the most serious drawbacks come from the device itself rather than from the material it carries.

The clearest advantage is that digital material stays current. A printed textbook is fixed at the moment it goes to press and becomes progressively more obsolete over the years a school keeps it in circulation, whereas a digital curriculum can be corrected and updated centrally at almost no cost. There are practical gains too: a single device replaces a bag of heavy books, and the recurring expense of replacing worn or outdated copies disappears. Interactive material also allows a weaker student to repeat an explanation privately as many times as necessary, something a printed page cannot offer.

The difficulties, however, are not incidental. A tablet is the same object students use for entertainment, and it carries every application designed to capture attention; expecting a fourteen-year-old to resist that for six hours a day, while a teacher monitors thirty screens, is unrealistic. Research also suggests that reading on screen produces weaker retention than reading on paper, particularly for longer and more demanding texts. Total replacement additionally makes learning conditional on infrastructure — a flat battery, a broken screen or an unreliable connection at home stops work entirely, and these failures fall hardest on students whose families cannot simply replace the device.

In conclusion, digital materials are cheaper, more current and more adaptable, but they arrive attached to a device that is difficult to control and expensive to depend on absolutely.

Some schools have now removed printed textbooks completely, issuing every student with a tablet or laptop instead. Setting out the advantages and disadvantages is straightforward enough; what is more useful is noticing that they do not sit on the same side of the same object. Almost every benefit belongs to digital content, while almost every drawback belongs to the device that delivers it — and it is the decision to replace books entirely that binds the two together.

The advantages of the content are substantial. A printed textbook is frozen at the date of printing and then kept in service for a decade, so students routinely learn from material the subject has moved past; a digital curriculum can be revised centrally and instantly, at essentially no marginal cost. Adaptivity is the more interesting gain: software can let a struggling student repeat an explanation privately, without the social cost of asking a third time in front of a class, and can hold a confident student at a level a whole-class textbook cannot. Against a shelf of identical, ageing, one-speed books, this is a real improvement.

The disadvantages, by contrast, are properties of the hardware. A school-issued tablet is not a book that happens to be electronic; it is a general-purpose device connected to an attention economy engineered by well-funded companies to be difficult to resist, and it asks adolescents to win that contest for six hours a day while one teacher supervises thirty screens. The evidence on comprehension compounds this: reading long or demanding text on screen tends to produce shallower retention than the same text on paper, partly because the medium invites skimming and removes the physical friction that slows a reader down.

Complete replacement then converts an ordinary inconvenience into a single point of failure. A dead battery, a cracked screen or a poor connection at home does not degrade study, it stops it — and those failures are not evenly distributed. A student whose family can replace a device the same week loses an afternoon; a student whose family cannot loses weeks, and the gap that opens is invisible to a school looking at its own equipment budget.

Weighing the two therefore requires separating them. The case for digital learning materials is strong; the case for making a fragile, distracting, expensive device the sole route to them is much weaker. Conflating the two is what makes "entirely" the questionable word in this policy — a school that keeps printed texts for extended reading while using devices for what they genuinely do better captures most of the advantages and few of the costs.