WALDORF SCHOOL IN SILICON VALLEY
The New York Times reported in 2011 about a private school in Los Altos, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley: “The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children [here]. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard” (Richtel, Matt. “A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute,” NYTimes.com, October 22, 2011). One would expect that the children of these elite employees, who pay over $17,000 per year in tuition for each elementary student, should have a significant advantage over the rest of us. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen, but here is what is so striking: the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, one in a chain of 160 across the United States, shies away from technology—so much so that there are no computers, no iPads, and no iPhones! As the article explained,
[T]he 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. Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix.
New York University professor Adam Alter explains, “75% of the students [at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula] are the children ofSilicon Valley tech execs, which is striking. These are people who, publicly, will expound on the wonders of the products they’re producing and at the same time they decided in all their wisdom that their kids didn’t belong in a school that used that same tech” (Yates, Eames. “This Silicon Valley school shuns technology—yet most of the students are children of tech execs,” BusinessInsider.com, March 23, 2017).
Toni Hassan, writing for Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald, titled an article, “Facebook is ripping society apart, and other reasons to abandon social media.” He begins by describing another powerful disillusioned player. “When Chamath Palihapitiya joined Facebook in 2007, it had 50 million users. By the time he left after four years, it had 800 million. He was its vice-president for user growth. These days, he feels tremendously guilty.” Hassan himself states in this article:
I think we all knew in the back of our minds, even though we feigned this whole line that there probably aren’t any bad consequences, I think in the deep recesses of our minds we kind of knew something bad could happen… The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we’ve created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no co-operation, misinformation, mistruth, and it’s not an American problem—this is not about Russian ads—this is a global problem (SMH.com.au, December 15, 2017).
It is interesting to note that Mark Zuckerberg studied psychology as well as computer science at Harvard, but nothing in this article is meant to portray him, or any of these men, as evil. They began as very intelligent young men trying to become successful, and some thought they could change the world for the better—but there is always that law of unintended consequences. Some are now expressing contrition and trying to change things for the better. It takes courage to speak out as some have. However, there is a spirit being that the Bible calls “the prince of the power of the air,” and he is directing “the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:2). He is the one deceiving the whole world (Revelation 12:9).