A Silicon Valley school that doesn’t compute

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.

This is the Waldorf School of the Peninsula,one of around 160 Waldorf schools in the country that subscribe to a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning through creative,hands-on tasks. 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.

“I fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school,” said Alan Eagle,50,whose daughter,Andie,is one of the 196 children at the Waldorf elementary school; his son William,13,is in middle school. “The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic,that’s ridiculous.”

Eagle knows a bit about technology. He holds a computer science degree from Dartmouth and works in executive communications at Google. He uses an iPad and a smartphone. But he says his daughter,a fifth grader,“doesn’t know how to use Google,” and his son is just learning. (Eighth grade onwards,the school endorses the limited use of gadgets.)

Three-quarters of the students here have parents with a strong high-tech connection. Eagle sees no contradiction. Technology,he says,has its time and place.

On a recent Tuesday,Andie Eagle and her fifth-grade classmates refreshed their knitting skills. It’s an activity the school says helps develop problem-solving,patterning,math skills and coordination. The long-term goal: make socks.

Down the hall,a teacher drilled third-graders on multiplication.

In second grade,students standing in a circle learned language skills by repeating verses while simultaneously playing catch with bean bags. It’s an exercise aimed at synchronising body and brain. Cathy Waheed,who is a former computer engineer,tries to make learning both irresistible and highly tactile. Last year she taught fractions by having the children cut up food—apples,quesadillas,cake—into quarters,halves and sixteenths.

The Waldorf advocates make it tough to compare,partly because as private schools they administer no standardised tests in elementary grades.

Advocates for equipping schools with technology say computers can hold students’ attention and,that young people who have been weaned on electronic devices will not tune in without them.

Ann Flynn,director of education technology for the National School Boards Association,which represents school boards nationwide,said computers were essential. “If schools have access to the tools and can afford them,but are not using the tools,they are cheating our children”.

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 that “a spare approach to technology in the classroom will always benefit learning.”

There are also plenty of high-tech parents at a Waldorf school in San Francisco and just north of it at the Greenwood School in Mill Valley,which doesn’t have Waldorf accreditation but is inspired by its principles.

The students,meanwhile,say they don’t pine for technology,nor have they gone completely cold turkey. Andie Eagle and her fifth-grade classmates say they occasionally watch movies. One boy plays with flight-simulator programmes on weekends.

Finn Heilig,10,whose father works at Google,says he liked learning with pen and paper—rather than on a computer—because he could monitor his progress over the years.

“You can look back and see how sloppy your handwriting was in first grade. You can’t do that with computers ‘cause all the letters are the same,” Finn said.