Silicon Valley children have technology-free education

Protecting its own

An article – originally in the Sunday Times, reprinted in The Week of 1^st December – is headed “How Silicon Valley educates its children”. A highlighted quote states: “The same executives who have flooded the world with smartphones pay up to $40,000 a year to wall off their kids from their creations”.

The very highly-paid executives of Apple, Facebook, Google, and others ensure that their own children have a completely technology-free education at least during their primary school years. The children attend a school which is run largely according to Rudolph Steiner principles, with the emphasis on practical activities, much of it out-of-doors, particularly in the early years. When more formal lessons are introduced, it is by means of blackboard-and-chalk, paper-and-pencil. Children do not bring phones (nor any other screens) into school until they are aged at least 11, and even then are not allowed to turn them on during school hours. The Nannies who look after the children at home are required to sign contracts which include “no screen” clauses whereby they promise not to use mobile phones when they are with the children.

Again I quote from the article itself: “Alarming rates of anxiety, depression and loneliness among young people are being linked to screen time. For some parents – the very ones who are writing the code so perfectly tuned to poke our lizard brains and keep us swiping – the studies simply reinforce what they already know: modern technology is addictive by design”.

Not only is Silicone Valley enslaving a large proportion of the world's children and young people; it is well aware that it is doing so. The first message to be seen on every new phone and similar device should be Caveat emptor, - let the buyer beware.

By Prayer Crusader St Theresa of Avila