At Waldorf School in Silicon Valley, Technology Can Wait
“I fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school,” said Alan Eagle, 50, whose daughter, Andie,
is one of the 196 children at the Waldorf elementary school; his son William, 13, is at the nearby middle school.
He started waving his arms at them: “I said: ‘Hello guys, I’m here.’ ”
Finn Heilig, 10, whose father works at Google, says he liked learning with pen
and paper — rather than on a computer — because he could monitor his progress over the years
And where advocates for stocking classrooms with technology say children need computer time to compete in
the modern world, Waldorf parents counter: what’s the rush, given how easy it is to pick up those skills?
She says the typical Waldorf parent, who has a range of elite private and public schools to choose from, tends to be liberal and highly educated, with strong views about education; they also have a knowledge
that when they are ready to teach their children about technology they have ample access and expertise at home.
Paul Thomas, a former teacher and an associate professor of education at Furman University, who has written 12 books about public educational methods, disagreed, saying
that “a spare approach to technology in the classroom will always benefit learning.”
“Teaching is a human experience,” he said.
