A Silicon Valley School That Doesn't Use Computers 333
Hugh Pickens writes "Matt Richtel writes that many employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard send their children to the Waldorf School in Los Altos where 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. Computers are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home. 'I fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school,' says Alan Eagle whose daughter, Andie, attends a Waldorf school, an independent school movement that boasts an 86 year history in North America. 'The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that's ridiculous.' Advocates for equipping schools with technology say computers can hold students' attention and, in fact, that young people who have been weaned on electronic devices will not tune in without them."
Re:Not all schools are equal (Score:2, Insightful)
A computer/tablet can't teach as well as a good or great teacher (as the students at Waldorf likely have access to), but in a large percentage of cases around the country, where the teachers are in fact poor, computers and tablets can make a tremendous difference.
[citation needed]
No Computers? No Computers! (Score:5, Insightful)
Good. Computers aren't needed outside of performing some research, actually typing out that essay, or putting together that presentation. You don't need fancy buildings and whizzbang gadgets to teach, you simply need inspiring people. Sadly, those type of people are at a premium nowadays. Even when you do find and employ them, the system generally does everything it can to get in their way and make their presence all but useless. This is a private school. so perhaps the rules are different. Maybe they can teach students how to do something other than fill in test bubbles.
Take a good thing too far... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Feedback (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Irony (Score:0, Insightful)
you're dumb
Can't teach your kids arithmetic? (Score:5, Insightful)
So an app on the iPad can't present any number of arithmetic problems and give a child feedback on right and wrong answers right away?
You obviously don't need computers to teach, but to claim that can't be helpful is just Luddism.
Re:Take a good thing too far... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not all schools are equal (Score:4, Insightful)
[...], but in a large percentage of cases around the country, where the teachers are in fact poor, [...]
[citation needed]
Citing personal experience, perhaps.
Few people have personal experience with "a large percentage of cases around the country", and those who do should generally have something they can cite to back up their claims.
Luddite High. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem isn't computers, the problem that other school districts face isn't the lack of great teachers.
The problem is socioeconomic. These kids are fucking upper crust yuppies. No shit they're going to turn out good results. It's easy to say that hitting a triple is easy when you were born on third base.
I wonder how their Computer Science curriculum is. I hope they don't have them break out pencil and paper and make them write down opcodes like Woz did in the fuckin' 70's optimizing disk drive routines.
Re:Take a good thing too far... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not all schools are equal (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't need "smarter education software." We need to remove computers from the classrooms. It's been going onto 30 years now and there hasn't been a SINGLE study showing computers help, and plenty showing they don't.
And to fire teachers who cannot teach.
Re:Irony (Score:2, Insightful)
Aren't these the same technology companies that constantly complain about the skills shortage which necessitates importation of foreign workers to work at these very companies? The emperor truly has no clothes.
Computers are great when they're not just chucked in to a job for the sake of it, and their use has to be very carefully managed; the same is true for adults. I've delivered training in corporate environments in which I've repeatedly had to ask ask adults to stop pressing keys and clicking mouse buttons. Because of this I would generally have people face away from their computers, or put them to sleep, when I need them to be listening to me.
The same things happens in meetings. Some time back a senior manager pulled me aside at the end of a meeting because she thought I'd been writing email and otherwise messing around with the computer during our meeting. In that case I could show her the very detailed and structured notes I'd written for the attendees. I understand her misconception, as would anyone else who's look around in a meeting at the people around them, checking email and doing anything but paying attention. It's difficult to have computers present without people fiddling around. In those cases, when I run a meeting, I'll ask people to close the lids on their machines unless they can give a good reason for sitting in my room with their eyes and hands occupied by their little box of light.
It makes sense in schools that the use of computers is very tightly controlled. Buying computers without forming a cohesive strategy for integrating them in to the curriculum is like a school district placing an order for "a big box of really good books".
On thing I liked about the way I studied statistics was that before touching computers we'd learn to do things manually, with graph paper. I wouldn't need to do this now, yet having learnt this way I have a better understand of what underlies the figures. It's not uncommon in the corporate world to be handed a set of figures and charts, produced by the Excel whiz who'll return a blank look if asked about standard deviation, percentiles, or heaven forbid if anyone should ask about averages beyond the mean. This is why we really shouldn't be too eager to get kids straight on to computers or even calculators. Computers are the learning tool, too easily becoming the lesson if not properly planned for.
Re:Not all schools are equal (Score:5, Insightful)
And to fire teachers who cannot teach.
As a gifted troublemaker born into a family of educators, I find that the problem is not bad teachers. The problem is parents who never said no to their little Johnny when he screamed and cried for his fifth Twinkie of the day. The problem is parents too caught up in their own careers or reliving their youth to actually do any damn parenting. You parents insist that your rotten spawn be allowed to use cell phones in class for "safety" reasons, you insist on suing the schools whenever a teacher tries to discipline your shithead kid and then bitch and moan all day that teachers aren't doing their jobs ( "my little Johnny is an angel, he would never do a thing like that!"). Of course the rich Right is all over it, saying that the teachers are bad and that the only solution is more budget cuts for public schools. What?!
Hey, bub, news flash - Teachers can't do their jobs because of assholes like you!
Your shithead kids are unmotivated and undisciplined because you have failed in your responsibility as parents, spoiling rotten your fat little narcissistic shitheads who grow up with gadgetry and unrealistic expectations and ADD medication as their only parents. You, are out at the bar looking for a new wife, or out driving your ridiculously expensive sports car, or working unnecessary 16-hour days collecting pig disgusting amounts of money and power to stroke your own ego.
It is you, the parents, who have failed in your responsibility, not the teachers. Back the fuck off. Goddamn yuppies.
Re:Feedback (Score:5, Insightful)
You haven't seen the state of computer software for elementary school, have you?
I've worked in IT for education for ten years. The wrong people are writing computer software for students. The wrong people are buying educational software. The wrong people are buying security software. The wrong people are implementing images and choices for things in the OS and for user-level security. And, a lot of the wrong people are maintaining the equipment.
I believe that computers for students as a concept is a total failure. Kids don't use computers for education, they use them to play. They stimulate the dopamine centers of the brain with them, and when they don't get their fix they get whiny and crabby and they act out in class. Take away the computers from the room except for a teacher's workstation that's unobtrusive and I think that many of the problems in the modern classroom will go away.
Re:Feedback (Score:4, Insightful)
Your Edison example is complete hogwash. His success with the light bulb included careful engineering of a complete system to enable production, delivery and the components to supply electrical illumination. Many other people where try all sorts of random components to build light bulbs. Edison was successful because of his systematic approach to the total problem.
Re:Not all schools are equal (Score:5, Insightful)
My wife is an English teacher for High School, and I'm an IT Manager, so we have debated this a lot.
I think you are almost right. My wife and I do not see where computers would help in, say, an English Lit classroom. This might be different with Math and Sciences but we can't speak for that. We both think that it removes hands-on learning and frees the teacher from actually teaching anything (not a good thing). If this improves teaching, then yes, just as in business these teachers should be replaced by robots.
But I think that all the money that is being spent on computers and tests would be better spent on helping teachers to improve. A group of experienced teachers going around and sitting in on classes for a week or so and providing positive feedback would work wonders on some of the "bad" teachers, who might just be new and overwhelmed, or lacking in support or something else.
I've also noticed that computers in classrooms are implemented in a crap way. My wife's last school just gave every single teacher and student IPad's without increasing the amount of IT support in the school, or even increasing the amount of power outlets in the classroom. I think this set up will cause more problems, more wasted time in classes, and a downturn in education. There is also a severe lack of training and a lack of time to create lessons that will use the technology well, so it really makes it useless to give them these tools.
Re:Not about attention (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know what planet you live on, but neat, legible handwriting is still absolutely required in nearly any industry. Case in point, a friend of mine ordered some copper walled cavity filters for VHF radio repeater. He specified that the cavities were to be made from 1.0mm wall thickness tubing. Unfortunately the guy who took the order couldn't write worth crap, and the machinist who built the unit read that as 10mm wall thickness.
This just shows one of the disadvantages of using cursive.
As an Engineer myself, most of my work is done on computers, but my note taking and what not is still done in long-hand. Under our corporate rules, we have to do this, and sign/date the pages as we go. The whole point is that these notebooks can then be legally used as evidence should there be any patent dispute or the like. A signed, and dated page from an Engineer's notebook is much better evidence of prior art than some computer file you dug up.
You can write whatever you want in a notebook with your handwriting, sign it and date it back, it will be impossible to tell. This is just an example of a bad law that will hopefully get fixed by the time the kids of today finish school.
Re:Not all schools are equal (Score:5, Insightful)
Poorer schools often have terrible teacher to student ratios[...]
The school they're describing is in California. My kids go to public schools in California, and I don't think what you're saying is accurate. In the late 90's/early 2000's, California went through a period where the economy was good, and we got class size reduction. It was state-mandated, e.g., they decided that in K-2 or whatever they would have a maximum student-to-teacher ratio of x. Then the economy turned sour, and they started laying off teachers and increasing class sizes again. Our school district is affluent, and it has some very highly ranked schools. However, my kids are experiencing the same extremely large class sizes as everyone else in California.
IIRC, research also shows that class size does not have any empirically measurable effect on learning until you get it down to about 10 -- which isn't going to happen in any public school.
It's true that in the US, when schools draw from a population with low socioeconomic status, those schools are almost always horrible by all the available objective measures. However, I'm really not convinced that that has all that much to do with funding and class size. I think it's overwhelmingly a "network effect," similar to the network effect that makes Windows so popular. The parents have low levels of education, don't have books in the house, don't subscribe to a newspaper, and don't have high educational expectations for their kids. Many of them may be immigrants, and their kids may come into school with low English skills. The teachers are there because they couldn't get a job in a better school district. Incompetent teachers probably won't be fired (because of teachers' unions), and even if they were, there is no particular reason to believe that the school would be able to attract a replacement candidate who was any better. Families that have enough money to have a choice will choose to live in a better school district. Kids model their behavior on their peers'. They see that 60% of their peers don't do their homework. There isn't enough critical mass of kids to do geekly things like a chess club or a model rocket club. None of this changes if you just put more money, computers, etc., into the school.
Re:Not all schools are equal (Score:5, Insightful)
And provide a decent, living wage to those who can teach and provide the resources and books to support them in their effort.
Re:Not all schools are equal (Score:5, Insightful)
A computerized lesson would (presumably) be done in the competent manner.
Big presumption, I have seen plenty of crappy teaching software, and assuming that it is selected by the same time honored system that textbooks are chosen, we can assume that quality will have nothing to do with what is put on the school systems computers.