This is one of my favorite news articles.
It answers the question, where do the tech leaders of Silicon Valley send their own children to school?
While they are pushing computers into public schools, they send their own children to a Waldorf School that does not permit any screen time at school and discourages its use at home. Learn why.
Why don’t they want Other People’s Children to have what they know is best?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I have been saying this for about 15 years now. What is the rush indeed to learn technology? There is not a rush. They can teach themselves. See Hole in the Wall Project in India.for proof. My daughter learned it on her own, too.
The word engagement is code word for entertainment. Technology is a distraction. Finland does not use it for those that think we should copy them. They also do not start teaching their children until they are 7 years old. They may have up to 3 teachers per classroom as well.
Amen.
Today I tried to do something on my computer but was confounded by an unsolicited update that had changed my whole desktop’s set up. If one has to relearn technology from one week to the next, how much more so from one decade to the next! The computer-ese we teach kids today will be worthless when they graduate. Let’s teach things that are not subject to rapid obsolescence, like Dickens novels and geography. God knows our kids don’t know this stuff.
Ponderosa,
Love the idea!
Shakespeare is never obsolete
“Teach them Tech”
Teach them googling
Teach them “Earth”
Teach them ogling
Teach them worth!
Teach them Facebook
Teach them Twitter
Teach for Tim Cook
Even better
Teach them iPhones
Teach them text
Teach then iHomes
They’re the best!
Teach them Shakespeare?
Oh, hell no
Plays and books here
Got to go!
Par for the course. As long as their children are receiving quality education, their bottom line are profits!
MeToo!
One of my favorites, as well.
The hypocrisy in public education is rich. Too often, it’s for other people’s children.
Diane, thanks for bringing this 2011 article back to the fore!
This article is seven years old. And it does not contribute to the conversation of how best to use technology in education. It just presents an either/or scenario – schools with lots of computers or schools with none. There are progressive tools and ways to implement tech in education. Read Mitch Resnick’s recent book, “Lifelong Kindergarten” to see some wonderful, thoughtful approaches. I understand the backlash because of the Reformists’ convoluted use tech in education, but that does not mean you throw the baby our with the bathwater.
Diane, why don’t you make an effort to highlight some of the good work in tech education that’s being done once in a while, instead of just the bad stuff. I recommend you start by reading Resnick’s book.
All the good work in ed tech?….like embedded testing, gamification of education, lack of social learning skills, fake news and info, eye strain, sleep disruption, childhood obesity.
All the things you list are related to the Reformist methods of implementing tech in schools. This is the sort of black and white thinking about technology and education that worries me. Do yourself a favor and look into some of the work being done by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT. Since Diane chose to re-post that fear-based article from 2011, here is another one from the same year: https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/09/26/a-case-for-lifelong-kindergarten/
Well Peter, that didn’t impress me much. I still don’t think any child under the age of 14-15 (high school age) should have access to so much technology during school or after school. No thank you, but I want my children taught by a real teacher, in a real classroom, filled with real children of all ethnicities and various intellect. Computers and technology have a way of sucking the soul from people and creating a society devoid of humanity.
That article talked a lot about “online communities” and how that allows kids to “share” and “communicate”, as if sharing and communicating can only happen online. I’d argue instead that online “communities” actually distract from real communities. By definition, going online is anonymous. Even on sites that force people to use their “real” names (or something that can pass for a real name anyway), people don’t have to be their real selves. There is no face-to-face contact – no gestures, no facial expression, not even tone of voice. Learning to interpret those signals is the core of forming a real community and learning to interact with actual live human beings. The more time kids are spending on these virtual “communities”, the less time they have available to directly interact in real communities of actual human beings, which is what is stunting kids’ social emotional growth.
Peter, when tech titans keep their own children away from their own products, it says something. The fact that the article was published in 2011 is irrelevant.
Quite so.
Since when has it become hard to understand the hypocrisy and emptiness—as well as the potential for great harm—laid bare by those that take the stance of “Do as I say, not as I do”?
We are in hard times indeed when alarm bells aren’t going off everywhere.
😎
I love this article. I have it bookmarked.
As I recall, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” is what John Deasy used to say about buying iPads for every student in Los Angeles — before the FBI raided his office for making insider deals with Apple.
There are so many reasons to avoid tech. Want more recent ones? How about the reasons tech executives are giving nowadays for not using their own products: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jan/23/never-get-high-on-your-own-supply-why-social-media-bosses-dont-use-social-media. Don’t get high on your own supply.
Dearest Dr. Ravitch:
This is also my favorite topic.
Morality about spirit of kindness and being patient is always the ruler on our mother Earth. From this, we learn that education style in the old school will win over any modern style in the end.
Life will always be simple, relaxed, and fulfilled enjoyment whenever people realize that we will be 6 feet under sooner and later. What is the rush to get heart attached and (mind) strokes from fame’s & fortune’s desires and materialistic stresses!!!
I am happy to learn that you, Mary and all guru/retirees in education have lots of fun-filled and realistic knowledge about public education in two war torn countries under an extreme /intense weather.
I cannot wait to acknowledge that you will be back soon with us, here in USA. Love you. May
Thank you, May.
Electronic World = EEEEEE… EW!
The $$$$$$ied want to keep the rest of us busy, dumbed-down, and ignorant. Think: Common Gore and Testing. Plus those $$$$$ied folks even make us, the public, pay for our own destruction and they pit us against each other for crumbs.
This is a reply to Peter Ross above – for some reason my direct replies keep disappearing into the ether:
That article talked a lot about “online communities” and how that allows kids to “share” and “communicate”, as if sharing and communicating can only happen online. I’d argue instead that online “communities” actually distract from real communities. By definition, going online is anonymous. Even on sites that force people to use their “real” names (or something that can pass for a real name anyway), people don’t have to be their real selves. There is no face-to-face contact – no gestures, no facial expression, not even tone of voice. Learning to interpret those signals is the core of forming a real community and learning to interact with actual live human beings. The more time kids are spending on these virtual “communities”, the less time they have available to directly interact in real communities of actual human beings, which is what is stunting kids’ social emotional growth
Don’t get me wrong, I do think there is a place for tech in the older grades, perhaps junior high or high school, especially when it comes to doing research and learning to use technology as a tool. But there is nothing magical about getting a bunch of kids from all over the place online and having them “interact” that couldn’t be much better done by having a bunch of kids actually get together in a room and talk and play.
Well, ignore all the hype and treat it like product. Because that’s what it is.
They want to sell your public school some product. Public schools buy plenty of stuff from plenty of vendors. Treat them as just another vendor and you won’t get burned.
You know this! These “dashboards” aren’t miraculous. The “content” they’re compiling is pulled from the same sources you can access. That student data they’re presenting? The students took online tests and the machine scored them.
Strip away everything from the marketing department and act accordingly. If public schools get snookered by these people I won’t fault tech companies- I’ll fault public schools for being patsies.
“National School Choice Week is a time for us to celebrate those schools and innovative learning organizations that are giving students a better chance: public charter, private, magnet, faith-based, home, districts with open enrollment, virtual, and many traditional public schools. All of these provide environments in which students can flourish.”
It’s so nice that DC gives us their priority list for schools.
Public schools, of course, come in dead last. An afterthought.
I’m flattered they mentioned us at all! Maybe if we’re REALLY good they’ll stop spending our money on political campaigns to harm our schools.
I’d settle for DeVos and Co just forgetting about public schools completely. Our kids would literally be better off if none of these people came to work every day.
I don’t know if you-all saw it but that memo ed reformers sent to Hillary Clinton’s campaign referenced “IQ”
What they meant was that public school teachers have lower IQ’s than tech titans and ed reform leaders.
They’re really insufferable people. “Snob” doesn’t begin to describe how highly these people think of themselves.
Can you serve people you have utter contempt for? I don’t think you can. Keep that in mind when they come to your school pushing product.
My eldest son is 30 and he works in this industry. When he was a little kid they had “shareware” – really simple programs that kids could fool with – it was free and it was a cooperative effort- the group would improve whatever was on the disc just for the joy of playing with it. That’s why he wanted to do it for work- not because it was “STEM” or because it was a Job Of The Future but because it was fun to tinker and it grabbed him.
It seems like a long time ago, but I think they DID have a sort of lofty “improve the world” mission at one time. Now of course they’re just one more industry selling stuff to kids.
That may be a 7 year old article, but a few weeks ago the father of virtual reality confirmed it’s true today:
“In Silicon Valley, the higher up somebody is in the tech world, generally speaking, the more they try to insulate their kid from any of our products. What I see is executives at the big tech companies putting their kids in Waldorf schools.”
“They just don’t let their kids go online except in very limited and strictly supervised ways and preferably not at all. The people who do this stuff really don’t want their kids to be around it.”
Jaron Lanier, Interdisciplinary Scientist at Microsoft Research, creator of virtual reality, interview with Mary Harris, WNYC radio, December 7, 2017
Yes, the creators of the web services that everybody uses send their kids to Waldorf schools. But, crucially, Lanier does not condemn all of technology, in education or anywhere else. I’ve just read his new book, and all his others as well, and he is supremely optimistic about lots of technology for creativity, education, art, medicine, and humanity. Not all tech has to come from the big five (Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft). Tech such as Scratch developed by educational institutions like MIT are not the boogymen. And this blog should highlight the incredible efforts and ideas coming from the tech good guys once in a while, instead of always lumping them in with the reformist stuff or insisting it’s all “screen time.”
Peter Ross: What most readers object to is the profiteering associated with tech. If they gave their products away, they would receive a warm reception. People also object to the fantasy that tech can and should replace teachers. Most of us believe that human contact is at the heart of education.
I used to work in high tech as a software engineer and I certainly don’t object to technology. It can be a very useful tool — and is in many cases.
What I object to is the insertion of highly invasive technology (eg, “Personalized learning” which tracks students every answer — and in some cases, every mouse click) — and stuff like Common Core, meant to facilitate said insertion — into the schools.
For tech companies, it’s not only about product sales but just as much (if not more) about data collection — and money which follows from the control and use of such data.
Such collection posses a grave threat to civil liberties and democracy.
I also object to the idea of displacing human teachers with “teaching bots” (aka personalized learning) because the latter is basically a hyped up lie which does not even come close to real teaching. Much of it is little better than Skinner’s pigeon boxes.
That includes Bill Gates. I read about it earlier this month.
Bill Gates Limits His Children’s Use of Technology.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had a similar approach.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/bill-gates-children-no-mobile-phone-aged-14-microsoft-limit-technology-use-parenting-a7694526.html
I don’t care where tech giants send their kids to school.
But what I do care about is when folks like Bill Gates use their considerable wealth to perform unethical and most likely illegal “experiments” like Common Core on other people’s kids.
Who the hell do these people think they are, anyway?
What gives them the right? Certainly not their money.
It would be easier to digest what they do to the public if they also did it to themselves.
“Who the hell do these people think they are, anyway? What gives them the right? Certainly not their money.”
Lord Acton answered those questions a couple of hundred years ago. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
That defines people like Bill Gates and the Koch brothers. No one gave them the right to do anything. And they don’t care what we think. They use their wealth to buy whatever they want, even if what they want destroys all the rest of us and them in the end.
Well said.
This was just sent out from the WH. Looks like Betsy has all the answers. Aren’t we lucky, “…and many traditional public schools” are part of a good choice selection. What exactly is a ‘public charter’? “Virtual’ schools have been proven to be scams that don’t educate. Never mind, its a choice and that is all that matters.
……………………
In RealClearPolicy, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos joins Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) in writing that “choice does not mean elevating any one type of school over another. Rather, it is about providing a diverse and dynamic menu of high-quality and innovative offerings from which families can choose.” In recognition of National School Choice Week, they explain that it is “a time for us to celebrate those schools and innovative learning organizations that are giving students a better chance: public charter, private, magnet, faith-based, home, districts with open enrollment, virtual, and many traditional public schools.”
Why not elevate bad and ineffective charter schools as equal to excellent public schools?
What’s great for the fat cats is never appropriate for the little people. Besides, why not pawn off everything crappy to other people’s kids? Control and shape their ability to think critically, and you will have a subservient friend forever, never to question the status quo.
I don’t really think the fat cats understand what is due in their come uppance.
Never underestimate the power of grassroots people!
I would love to see an updated version of that article!
The writer, Matt Richtel, notes that Waldorf schools do well because their students are “…from families that value education highly enough to seek out a selective private school, and usually have the means to pay for it”. In that observation, Mr. Richtel seems to echo the attitude of the “reformers”, who think that instruction driven by standardized tests is good for children raised in poverty but inappropriate for those with the means to attend selective schools… that children raised in affluence can attend schools where there is “no need to rush” but poor children NEED to rush, NEED to pass tests, and the schools they attend NEED to push them through ASAP…