Letter: Waldorf School engages the world
The Waldorf School in Garden City is cutting against the societal trend and shunning technology for elementary school students. They have no technology, encourage a "no screen" policy at home and go outside in any weather. Shot on Feb. 4, 2014. (Credit: Newsday / Alejandra Villa)
Your refreshing article "Going their own way: Embracing low tech" [News, March 22] emphasized the importance of protecting young children from our obsession with electronic media, and of nourishing them through encounters with the natural, social, cultural and practical worlds. But "no-tech" is a misnomer for what happens at the Waldorf School of Garden City -- and not merely because older students engage with digital technology.
When I attended The Waldorf School more than four decades ago, we explored the origins of communications technology as well as power -- mechanical, steam, electromagnetic, solar, nuclear -- optics, binary code and much else that now lurks behind our screens. In eighth grade, we visited the computer labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All of this continued when I taught there in the 1980s and '90s.
The key to education isn't the quantity of gadgetry, it's the quality of what's going on all the time. Its essential fruit is a love for the world and the desire to understand and engage with it.
"Deeper tech" or "true tech" might be more apropos.
Joseph Proskauer, Westbury
