Google Execs And Other Silicon Valley Bigwigs Send their Kids to a Waldorf School – NY Times

MB Comment: The NY Times managed to do a great article on Waldorf schools, if only because tech titans send their kids there. My kids go to a Waldorf School here in the Seattle area. Sebastian (age 10) is the Refusers drummer, so if you like that reggae groove on Vaccination Choice, funk groove on Crazy Cult or rocking in the pocket groove on Mad Hatter Blues – you are listening to a Waldorf student.

Waldorf schools are an alternative if you can’t stand what public schools are doing to your children – including vaccinations. Waldorf does not have any official position on vaccination, it’s up to the parents. Refusing vaccinations is acceptable.

For that reason, Waldorf Schools are demonized by the likes of Paul Offit, Seth Mnookin and brain-dead local journalists looking for scapegoats for vaccine failure and the occasional case of chickenpox. The medical establishment despises Waldorf schools.

The NY Times story sidestepped that issue. But parents in favor of vaccination choice might want to investigate Waldorf education. It’s not for everyone and it’s not cheap, but it’s great for our family. Our local Waldorf School is run on a shoestring budget and most families get tuition assistance, so it’s not an exclusive academy designed only for high-tech gazillionaires. Another local private school caters to that Microsoft crowd.

Incidentally, the Refusers song Robot Factory is about the issues raised in this article – it’s based on my personal dismal experience with the LA public school system.

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A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute

NY Times October 23, 2011

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 …

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. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans. 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 … Mr. Eagle knows a bit about technology. He holds a computer science degree from Dartmouth and works in executive communications at Google, where he has written speeches for the chairman, Eric E. Schmidt …

On a recent Tuesday, Andie Eagle and her fifth-grade classmates refreshed their knitting skills, crisscrossing wooden needles around balls of yarn, making fabric swatches. It’s an activity the school says helps develop problem-solving, patterning, math skills and coordination …

Down the hall, a teacher drilled third-graders on multiplication by asking them to pretend to turn their bodies into lightning bolts. She asked them a math problem — four times five — and, in unison, they shouted “20” and zapped their fingers at the number on the blackboard …

Andie’s teacher, 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.

“For three weeks, we ate our way through fractions,” she said. “When I made enough fractional pieces of cake to feed everyone, do you think I had their attention?”

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