The Waldorf Approach to Technology
As parents and educators, we know that technology is an important and inextricable part of today’s world. At the same time, we know that making sensible choices about tech and digital media can have significant cognitive, social, physical, and emotional benefits for children, both today and in the future.
At Marin Waldorf School, we advocate a slow, thoughtful approach to tech—both at home and at school. Our curriculum is designed to foster critical thinking skills, self-confidence, flexibility, and creativity in children before introducing them to the often overpowering influence of media and technology.
Our Approach: Intentional, Experiential, Screen-Free
At Marin Waldorf School, our rich interdisciplinary education emphasizes hands-on experiences, human relationships, creativity, social responsibility, and connection with nature. Our curriculum and pedagogy are based on the understanding that, as best-selling author Jonathan Haidt writes in his new book The Anxious Generation, “Experience, not information, is the key to emotional development.”
Our campus is intentionally screen free and we don’t use educational technology in the classroom, unless it is required for assisted learning. Our teachers don’t rely on tablets and laptops to engage their classes, but invest time in creating dynamic and developmentally responsive lessons across subject areas. Even parents are asked to keep their phones tucked away in bags or pockets while on campus.
Why? Because children learn through doing, exploring, and experiencing. And research shows they learn best when they are able to build quality in-person relationships with their teachers. Every day at Marin Waldorf School, we are present in our lessons and with each other, learning how to become engaged citizens of our class, our community, and the world.
Slow Tech—Not No Tech—Curriculum
Starting in early childhood, we prioritize building academic, social, and emotional capacities in our students, slowly and intentionally introducing media and technology so that it can be used as a resource and a tool.
Importantly, we present technology within a larger context of human-to-human communication and literacy, paving the way for a healthy relationship to media and technology in the future. For example, we consider tech education to include activities like letter writing, phone calls, emails, and other forms of communication, teaching children how technology fits into a larger social context.
Early Childhood: Preschool and Kindergarten
The smell of bread baking, watercolor paintings on the walls, wooden toys to play with: as soon as you step into a Marin Waldorf School classroom, you’ll feel the difference. Our welcoming preschool and kindergarten classes are built for tactile learning, social engagement, and play.
In early childhood, children benefit from a rich experiential foundation with little or no screen time or influence from digital media. We work in partnership with parents to reduce or limit media and to model healthy habits around technology at home. By emphasizing experiential learning through outdoor play, alongside artistic activities, movement, music, handwork, and lots of time outdoors, our students build essential cognitive, problem-solving, memory, and social-emotional skills.
Elementary School: Foundational Skills
During grades 1 to 4, children are guided by parents and teachers in building social skills through group work and free play; they develop their imagination and creativity through the arts, music, and stories; and they build essential physical and fine/gross motor skills through collaborative games, ample time outdoors, twice daily recess, and applied arts, from knitting to woodwork. Our elementary school teachers don't use technology classroom, and we encourage parents to limit digital media and devices at home during the early grades.
It's important to note that our approach isn't simply to discourage technology and screen time; we actively encourage the tactile, hands-on, real-world, and social experiences that children need to build a foundation for capable, healthy, and responsible tech use in the future.
Middle School: Technology As a Tool
In grades 5 to 8, media and technology are gradually introduced at school, teaching students how to positively use these tools in their school work and in their relationships.
During middle school, students are introduced to internet research for school projects and learn keyboarding skills, all while maintaining and deepening real human relationships with their peers and benefiting from classrooms free of educational technology. We continue to prioritize social-emotional learning through group work in the classroom, as well as cooperative projects, like class plays and orchestra performances.
Importantly, we talk about tech and its responsible uses. We guide students to become thoughtful and safe digital citizens through our engaging social ethics and Cyber Civics curriculum, which covers topics like social media, online safety, mass media, and other crucial topics during 6th, 7th, and 8th grade.
A Like-Minded Community
In today’s tech-centric environment, it is difficult to limit or eliminate screen-based media from your child’s life—particularly when media, movies, and video games have become such a widely accepted aspect of childhood.
Marin Waldorf School provides an alternative. We know many families choose our school because they are looking for a low-tech environment. Here, we encourage parents to work in partnership with our faculty to limit the influence of media and technology at home, creating a community of children who don’t feel pressured to play the latest video games or who aren’t constantly asking to borrow your phone.
As children grow older, we encourage parents to serve as mentors and guides to their children when introducing media at home. That means setting boundaries about when and where we use technology, discussing media and its uses with our children, and co-viewing movies and television programs as a family.
Why Limit Media?
Research shows that screen time and media, especially for young children, can curtail attention, reduce empathy and slow language acquisition, interfere with sleep, and negatively affect academic performance over the long term.
“Children need to explore their environment using all their senses to learn about the world, so it is very important that they can interact with three-dimensional spaces and activities,” says Dr. Jennifer F. Cross, pediatrician and a developmental pediatrics expert at NewYork-Presbyterian Komansky Children’s Hospital.
Even without research, we know it on a gut level. Children are unnaturally captivated by screens, tuning out human interaction—or even basic needs, like hunger—when pulled into a television show or video game.
We encourage parents to limit screentime so that their children can observe and experience the world with their senses, naturally building neurological pathways, social skills, and the ability to learn new things, as their brains are built to do.
More Resources for Families
Let's help our kids grow up to be tech savvy! For families looking to make strong media choices at home, we have some resources and recommendations to share.
Diana Graber, founder of the Cyber Civics curriculum and author of Raising Humans in a Digital World, is a frequent speaker at Marin Waldorf School. Click for Diana’s most recent presentation to the MWS community or download resources from her presentation here.
Author and educator Phillip Done shares his tips for navigating technology at home in How I Got My Students to Stop Staring at Screens in Time Magazine.
Screen Sense, a family and school advocacy organization, shares a tool for limiting technology and offers an age-appropriate outline for a slow tech approach at home.
Jonathan Haidt, the bestselling coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind, investigates the youth mental health crisis and offers a plan for a healthier childhood in his new book The Anxious Generation.