Tech kids
When I graduated from college in the mid 1980s, I didn’t know anything about computers. One very good reason for this is that there were hardly any yet at the time. As with the majority of my graduating class, I don’t think I even saw one “in person” by then. But when I applied for a job in a consulting company, they told me that my test scores showed that I had an aptitude for artificial intelligence and so was promptly assigned to the IT group. In my very first week at work, I was told to do a survey. I did not yet even understand what “hard disk” or “kilobyte” meant and I remember panicking when my respondents started asking me technical clarifications. My generation’s children, however, would probably have a very different experience when they graduate. They are the first group of kids to have grown up surrounded by digital media, which is why they are sometimes referred to as the Internet Generation or the Digital Generation.
Indeed, technology has crept so much into our everyday lives that some educators are now making a huge pitch for infusing digital technology inside the elementary school classroom. Some have even boldly predicted the death of books and want every schoolchild to have a laptop. Computers, they claim, motivate children to learn faster and “connect” them better to the world. Others argue that unless we train our five-year-olds in computers today, they won’t be able to land those high-paying IT jobs of tomorrow.
While I don’t think that there is clear and sufficient evidence yet to truly support the push for advanced technology inside the classroom, I do believe that many Filipino parents tend to subscribe to it. In fact, there are those who would probably even say that it’s a no-brainer. Yet a recent story that was published in the New York Times reveals a seemingly opposite point of view among many parents working at some of the best known companies in the very center of the tech world: Silicon Valley. Apparently, engineers and executives from companies such as Apple, eBay, Google, Hewlett-Packard, and Yahoo in Los Altos, California are sending their kids to a school where there are no computers! In fact, not only are there no LCD screens to be found, as Matt Richtel reports in A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute, “...the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud.” The school that Richtel is referring to is the Waldorf School of the Peninsula. It’s one of around 160 Waldorf schools in the US and over 1,000 worldwide that believe in “…a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks.” I know a little bit about the Waldorf system since my kids go to the pioneer school of Waldorf education in the Philippines, the Manila Waldorf School. However, I am probably not as credible on the subject of computers in elementary school as someone like Alan Eagle who is an executive at Google and holder of a computer science degree from Dartmouth. He has two kids in the Waldorf School of the Peninsula and is quoted by Richtel as saying, “I fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school. The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous.” Eagle claims that his fifth grade daughter doesn’t even know how to use Google yet. Up to 75 percent of the students in the Waldorf School of the Peninsula have parents who have a strong high-tech background. Yet they see no contradiction in sending their kids to a “low-tech” school. Technology, Mr. Eagle says, has its time and place. The best way for young minds to learn is through “human-to-human interaction.” Rather than helping, technology at younger ages could actually interfere with learning and creativity.
In a study made by the Alliance for Childhood, an international partnership of educators, health professionals, researchers, and other advocates for children, the group asserts that there is no clear evidence that shows that computers really motivate children to learn faster and better. The opposite may in fact be true and that the “sheer power of information technologies may actually hamper children’s intellectual growth.” The alliance also notes that the technology that we want to teach our youngsters in schools today will be long obsolete by the time our kindergarteners and grade schoolers graduate from college. On the other hand, creativity, imagination, and innovative thinking will always be in demand in the workplace. Overemphasizing technology, they argue, can also weaken human bonds and isolate rather than connect children to the world. They conclude that instead of putting all our faith in technology to solve the problems of education, we should instead renew our attention and commitment to developmentally appropriate education and to the “…full range of children’s ‘lowtech’ needs — physical, emotional, and social, as well as cognitive.”
Even though I practically had no IT background whatsoever, I did mailto:kindergartendad@yahoo.com.quickly learn how to program in Basic, COBOL and in a few other languages. My life as a techie, however, was short-lived. It wasn’t my cup of tea and so I moved on to something else within six months. I don’t know what kind of electronic world my children will run into 10-15 years from now. Nor do I claim any expertise in developmental learning and on the role of computers in elementary education. One thing that I understand, however, is that the best hardware and software are not in machines and in gadgets. They’re in people. No matter what the future brings, that will always compute.
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Please e-mail your reactions to kindergartendad@yahoo.com.
