Waldorf education poses certain answers to the question "How will our children be able to cope with the challenges of an increasingly technological world? How will they be able to determine its proper uses and avoid its misuses?
The Waldorf approach is supported by the findings of The Alliance for Childhood, which has issued a new report called Tech Tonic: Towards a New Literacy of Technology. Developed through a roundtable of national experts, the report raises important questions about the increasingly screen-centered life style of today's children. It calls for a radically different kind of technology education, one grounded in ethical principles and face-to-face relationships with people and with nature.
The Alliance writes:
Tech Tonic: Towards a New Literacy of Technology challenges education standards and industry assertions that all teachers and children, from preschool up, should use computers in the classroom to develop technology literacy. That expensive agenda ignores evidence that high-tech classrooms may actually lower student achievement. At the same time, society's love affair with high-tech toys and entertainment is making children ill-promoting a sedentary life at a time when childhood obesity is at epidemic levels.
Tech Tonic calls for seven key reforms:
- Make human relationships and a commitment to strong communities a top priority at home and at school.
- Color childhood green to refocus education on children's relationships with the rest of the living world.
- Foster creativity every day, with time for the arts and play.
- Put community-based research and action at the heart of the science and technology curriculum.
- Declare one day a week an electronic entertainment-free zone.
- End marketing aimed at children.
- Shift spending from unproven high-tech products in the classroom to children's unmet basic needs.
You can read the complete text of Tech Tonic and order print copies of the report at the Alliance's web site:
