At Waldorf School in Silicon Valley, Technology Can Wait<br />“I fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school,” said Alan Eagle, 50, whose daughter, Andie,<br />is one of the 196 children at the Waldorf elementary school; his son William, 13, is at the nearby middle school.<br />He started waving his arms at them: “I said: ‘Hello guys, I’m here.’ ”<br />Finn Heilig, 10, whose father works at Google, says he liked learning with pen<br />and paper — rather than on a computer — because he could monitor his progress over the years<br />And where advocates for stocking classrooms with technology say children need computer time to compete in<br />the modern world, Waldorf parents counter: what’s the rush, given how easy it is to pick up those skills?<br />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<br />that when they are ready to teach their children about technology they have ample access and expertise at home.<br />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<br />that “a spare approach to technology in the classroom will always benefit learning.”<br />“Teaching is a human experience,” he said.
