Low-Tech Kids

Thoughts about how our school’s Waldorf-inspired curriculum helps us live a low-tech lifestyle

 Next week is screen-free week in our house. The children don’t know it yet, and they won’t be thrilled about it, but it is something we need to do regularly for everyone’s mental health. Sometimes my children watch too much TV. I will be the first to admit it. But rather than feeling bad about it, I realize my assessment is completely subjective and based solely on the needs of my children and family. While we certainly made the decision as parents to raise our children with limited exposure to screens, and selected a school that would support those values, we are not rigidly opposed. My third pregnancy was so physically and emotionally draining that, although I am not proud to admit it, I often depended on screen time to occupy my very busy three-year-old. And we realized once again just how flexible we actually are when it comes to the children watching some television when, due to either wildfire smoke, excessive heat, or COVID isolation, multiple weeks of school were missed, with our very bored children trapped inside the house. Not surprisingly, it is rather difficult to entertain three children of varying ages inside a house for an unusually extended period of time. I don’t know about you, but I have a limited capacity for how many blanket forts and/or craft projects I am willing to clean up per day, and to be honest it’s probably less than two. My own mental health requires them to be distracted for at least SOME of the time. So, we compromise. They are only allowed to watch specific things and none of our children may have a cell phone until at least eighth grade, an honor-based agreement every student has at their school.

               Beginning next fall, all three of my children will attend the same public, Waldorf-inspired charter school. My younger brother, twelve years my junior, actually attended the very same school many years ago, and it was during this time that I was first exposed to and inspired by the Waldorf curriculum. I knew that even if it was just for Kindergarten, I wanted my children to experience that absolute magic. Waldorf Kindergarten is play-based, with an emphasis placed on building interpersonal relationships and navigating complex emotions in a group, as well as story-building, seasonal art, and self-expression. Because media and technology are discouraged through at least eighth grade in the traditional Waldorf pedagogy, the play is not as influenced by violent or commercial themes. The children are so completely and confidently in their element, that it is almost difficult to fully express the beauty of the tranquil rhythm that is Waldorf kindergarten. My older two children, Alako and Ailey, were fortunate enough to have the same wonderful Kindergarten teacher, Sallie, as well as her assistant teacher, our dear Miss Samantha, for all of their time in kindergarten. Those years were truly formative not just for our children, but for our family. Sallie gave us pillar stones for the foundation of our growing family, with her deep wisdom, solid respect for the students and for her craft, as well as her profound capacity for compassionate empathy. Sallie took our tender beginnings and painted them into a watercolor rainbow of possibilities. Although Ailey’s time in her sweet classroom was cut short due to COVID, something Ailey laments to this day, Sallie and Samantha managed to hold the space every day via Zoom so that, to some degree, Ailey was transported back into their warm cocoon of golden light.

               Adapting to remote learning was difficult for almost every educator and student, but it was especially challenging at our school, where the students have very limited exposure to screens and technology, other than what they experience at home. The foundational understanding is that young children need to communicate and learn deeply without the mediation of complex technology (https://steiner.edu/technology-and-media/). Recently, I was listening to a radio program discussing the work of Dr. Czeisler, PhD, MD, FRCP of Harvard Medical School, largely considered one of the world’s top sleep experts. According to the program, humans today are getting 20% less sleep than we did a century ago, and that on days when we are feeling groggy or sleep-deprived, we can be walking around with entire chunks of our brains asleep! Our brains require sleep to repair and fully function, and technology has been built around distracting us, which is because the business model for every major tech brand is simply to keep us scrolling longer. Another interesting fact that was mentioned is that, although we may convince ourselves otherwise, the human brain can only function on ONE thing at once! In fact, it take the brain an average of twenty-three minutes to re-focus after being distracted. Imagine what ten text messages or reminders might do to our brains throughout our day?! Our comfort with distraction has tricked us into thinking that we are able to use multiple platforms at the same time, at full capacity, when in fact we are simply switching quickly between tasks, and in so doing we are diminishing our ability to complete any of the tasks. This relationship is called the switch-cost effect. As modern humans, we literally allow our brains to be diminished by tech.  And I mean this both as a joke and also not as a joke.

 I notice a difference in my children when they have had too much media exposure: increased irritability, aggression and volume; bickering; and extreme emotions. Luckily, Alako was in fourth grade when they adapted to remote learning- about the same age I was when computers were introduced into classrooms in 1994. We had no trouble adapting to new technology then, as it was new and exciting, and it was very much the same for him. He was thrilled to log on every morning and the requirements for his grade, though ideally hands-on, were more conducive to technological reformulation. And it was entirely academic and supervised, without the threat of bullying or other inappropriate behaviors. Ailey, on the other hand, did not fare quite so well, as the work she would have been doing in the classroom would have been predominantly with her peers, rather than with me. We did our best to show up for the routine every day, but all of us were wildly relieved when in-person learning began again.

I am certainly not anti-tech. I will always prefer typing to handwriting. I love my phone and the mycelial connection it allows humans. But I am going to continue being cautious in how I expose my children to tech, especially social media. I am in no way trying to impeded their development or maturity, but the world is tough enough. I want to provide them with the opportunity to be innocent children for as long as possible.