New York Times article: A Silicon Valley School That Doesn't Compute
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recent article in Sunday's New York Times
A Silicon Valley School That Doesn't Compute
featuring the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, located 35 miles south of San
Francisco.
" The chief
technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here.
So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and
Hewlett-Packard. But the school's chief teaching tools are anything but
high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a
computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom,
and the school even frowns on their use at home."
The article focuses in large part on the
issue of technology in schools, as well as specifically on how Waldorf schools
instead engage students in learning through physical activity and creative
hands-on tasks. The author writes, "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....The Waldorf method is nearly a century old,
but its foothold here among the digerati puts into sharp relief an intensifying
debate about the role of computers in education."