Tech Businesses: No Tech Toys for Our Children’s Education

How do the people at tech businesses want their children educated?


I don’t have a link for it now, but I remember reading that Steve Jobs did not allow his children to have iPads and other electronic toys. He didn’t think they were good for their intellectual development. That was interesting to me because a local public school had provided Chromebooks for all students, and I had read of high schools providing iPads.

But now I see a similar story. The New York Times reports, “A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute.”





Now we know that these companies are pushing technology at the schools, trying to get public schools to spend lots of money purchasing there gizmoes for the good of the students (or so they claim). We also know that schools will use technology for reasons that seem more to do with behavior control than education. So what are we to make of these same people making completely opposite decisions when it comes to the education of their own children?

Do they happen to hold to weird beliefs about education so that they put their children in very different schools from the public schools that run after gadgets? Or, do they think that some children (ours) need a different kind of schooling than theirs need? Is this a two-tiered system where some are trained to be thinking adults and others are trained to be manipulated through images?