Employees of Silicon Valley giants send their children to a nine-classroom school without computer technologies

Employees of Silicon Valley giants send their children to school without computer technologies. This is the Waldorf School of the Peninsula. You couldn’t find here screens at all. But you can find pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud.

While other schools in the region brag about their wired classrooms, the Waldorf School embraces a simple, retro look — blackboards with colorful chalk, bookshelves with encyclopedias, wooden desks filled with workbooks and pencils.

This school subscribes to a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. The Waldorf method is nearly a century old, but its foothold here among the digerati puts into sharp relief an intensifying debate about the role of computers in education.

Some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix. And they absolutely right. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans.

Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise.  But parents have a different opinion: technology, they say, has its time and place.

But some students of the Waldorf School say they can become frustrated when their parents and relatives get so wrapped up in phones and other devices.

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