Low Tech Education in Silicon Valley

 

A recent piece in the New York Times highlights a Waldorf School in Los Altos, CA. Like other educational institutions and philosophies that share values with the Waldorf system, the vast majority of learning methods and resources are low tech, and low profile. Hands on learning is facilitated by a wide variety of methods. Ideas are captured on paper with old fashioned pens by students, on blackboards by teachers. There is a marked absence of computers.

So should it surprise us that top executives and other employees from eBay, HP, Google, Apple, and Yahoo send their kids here? In fact, 3/4 of parents work in the tech industry.  It feels like it should.

Mike Richtel from the Times comments:

"Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix."

Maybe...

"Don't mix" is a strong choice of words here. Perhaps a better would be "wait to mix." The school waits until 8th grade to begin introducing "gadgets"into a student's learning experience, but they do introduce them. Thus, students don't graduate without some form of educational engagement with modern technology. It is simply marginalized, and used when it becomes necessary.
Like any tool should be.

The point of Richtel's piece is clear, though. Some of the top tech heads in our country pick one of the most unplugged traditions of alternative education for their children.

This is a striking reminder of what many of us have felt for a long time. Maybe human learning  happens best when the burden of work - whether calculations, memorization, note taking, or another potentially "tedious" task - is done by the student directly.

Could it be that we shortchange kids by plugging them in the majority of their days, rather than offering them a challenging respite from things that flash, beep, and think for them?

Cans and Shoulds

It is a recurring symptom of our culture that we ask "can we" do something, and forget to ask "should we." We have a great deal of knowledge. We lack a great deal of wisdom.

Experiencing our world through our senses, teaches us in ways that cannot happen through a screen. We need the wild, we need mud, yarn, and nature to teach us about the beauty and blood of life in the real world. We are selling kids dreadfully short if our first instinct is to plug them in and download information to their hard disk. Kids aren't computers, and never will be, unless we reprogram them. There is a wide and increasing range of options for alternative education today, and the best ones (in my opinion) look more like great grandpa's classroom than they look like the school down the street.

Can we plug every student in America into a personal laptop or tablet for the duration of their education? Undoubtedly.


Should we?

You tell me.

Please read the full piece at the New York Times.

Via Neatorama. 

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