Truly Old School

It's pretty rare that I link to the Old Gray Whore, but this article is interesting. It's about a Silicon Valley elementary school that teaches "old school" style: books, pencils, blackboards, etc. Not a computer in sight. Many of the high-tech power players in the Valley are sending their kids there.

“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 at the nearby middle school. “The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous.”

Total and enforced absence of computers is perhaps a bit of an overreaction, (I won't go so far as to say Ludditic), but in principle I agree: the "Three Rs" should be the focus of early education, and I can't see that computers fundamentally assist in that endeavor.

I should point out that we had a computer lab in my elementary school, (dated between the death of the last Tyrannosaurus Rex and the rise of the first wooly mammoth), but that consisted of a teletype machine and an Apple (no ][, just Apple), for the purpose of introducing us to computers as a concept. The phrase "personal computer" had just been invented at that point, and was still not a reality as we know it today. Total computer interaction in the lab was probably less than 8 hours per child over the course of the fifth grade year.

I don't really think such a "familiarization process" is needed nowadays, since you can't get in a car or buy groceries without interacting with a computer; they are as much a part of modern life as cooking or riding a bike. Children are inundated with the fruits microcircuitry quite literally from the day they are born. A little bit of manual processing never hurt anybody, and it may actually help create a more solid foundation for further education. Sometimes, what was good enough for grandpa really is good enough.