Writing · 31 August 2026

But writing!?

Several parents say that their kids are very rarely asked to write a whole story.

I was happy when I saw the headline on NRK.no on 31 August 2026 about the lack of writing instruction in Norwegian schools, because this is something I've thought a lot about, and I've thought it was strange that it's been talked about so little.

I've been frustrated about a lot of things in Norwegian schools — personally I think for example that the word "leselyst" (reading for pleasure) is way too toothless, and I've played around with the word "leseambisjon" (reading ambition). But at least reading gets talked about loudly, and invested in (even if I don't always agree with how). But writing!?

The big focus on creative writing

I have a lot to complain about with my own schooling in Norway, but one thing I'll always be grateful for was the big focus on creative writing, which I loved and I had big plans of becoming an author (got some teenage writing published but it stopped there). I was very surprised at how different it is today.

What I've seen at home, and often hear from friends with kids at other schools, is that a lot of the writing consists of short reading comprehension answers and bullet-point presentations. Several parents say that their kids are very rarely asked to write a whole story.

To me the ability to express yourself in writing is just so incredibly important, for cognitive development, for emotional development, for citizenship and democracy, for effective learning etc.

Lots of practice

There's also a bit of overlap here with my complaint about math, that they're so focused on understanding and so uninterested in lots of practice and drilling that you never get any "fluency" — we've used Math Academy as an extra tool for math, and it's fantastic to see how he looks at a problem, and says "here we have to divide, multiply, simplify fractions etc" and does it in no time at all... That frees up his thinking and memory capacity to actually work on the new and challenging stuff he's learning.

What I often hear, and have also seen at home, is that kids get too little practice in the basics: spelling, sentence structure and handwriting. Then the writing goes slower and is less fun, before you even get to outlining, literary devices, drafts and revising.

At home

Since he already has a lot of extra stuff, including the math I mentioned, it's a bit hard to ask him to write a story for me on the weekend. But he's extremely motivated by competitions, an audience, homework... I've written to the library and the school and suggested organizing a writing competition, where of course everyone would be winners, what they wrote could be read aloud one evening by themselves, or by others, what they wrote could be hung up in the children's library as inspiration for others, etc. No interest...

I've been thinking of making an app for my son so he can practice spelling, thought I'd work with him a bit to find out what motivates him — is it getting example sentences with Pokemon examples read by a vampire voice for example? We'll fix that if so...

From a letter to a teacher at Humanistskolen in Oslo, December 2025

I've made a little tool myself that lets him drill spelling (very simple program with gamification — Ninjaord, where you get belts as you manage to spell different words etc — there's probably something similar out there, but I couldn't find anything that was exactly how I wanted it), and I feed it with words he's misspelled in the texts he writes, so that at least he gets his spelling loosened up a bit... But how we're going to get him to actually write more is something I'm still struggling with.

Technology in elementary school

I'm generally skeptical of technology in elementary school, and absolutely don't think this is a problem that can be solved by lots of technology, quite the opposite. On the other hand there are some exciting things you can do — for example I've experimented with taking pictures of his handwritten texts, and getting pretty good analyses of both spelling mistakes, and structural mistakes etc — this is using the professional models I have access to, and not just regular ChatGPT.

From a letter to the head of Skrivesenteret, 31 August 2026

It's really incredible what you can get done, at the same time I'm very unsure how you should use it pedagogically, and especially worried about creativity etc. The other day he told me about an idea he had — don't quite remember, something with a kind of magic journey, pretty cool idea. I said "You should try writing that story". "No, can't we ask AI to write it, it writes much better than me anyway"... That's exactly the area where I'm still very unsure... I see the possibilities, cool if he can make a backing track on Suno and jazz along on the saxophone. But the problem with AI is sort of that it can't just do some things, it can do everything.

From a letter to a teacher at Humanistskolen in Oslo, December 2025