The CTO of eBay, Inc., sent his children to school without computers. So did the staff of other world’s largest technology corporations, like Google, Apple, Yahoo, Hewlett-Packard. This school has a very simple old-fashioned look – board with colored chalk, bookshelves with encyclopedias, wooden desks with notebooks and pencils.

Proponents of learning without IT-technologies believe that computers inhibit creative thinking, mobility, human interaction and attention. These parents believe that when it is really necessary to acquaint children with the latest technology, they will always have the required skills and needed capabilities at home.

Paul Thomas, a former teacher and a current professor at Furman University, who wrote 12 books about educational methods in public institutions, claims that the educational process is better when less computers are used. “Education – is primarily a human feelings, gaining experience,” says Paul Thomas. “Technology only distracts when literacy, numeracy and critical thinking skills are needed.”

When technology-based learning supporters claim that computer literacy is needed to face the challenges of our time, parents, who believe that computers are not needed, wonder why children must learn to use computers promptly if it is so easy to learn? “It’s super easy. That’s almost the same as learning to brush their teeth,” says Mr. Eagle, a member of the Silicon Valley. “In places like Google we do technologies as stupidly simple as possible. I do not see the reason why children can not absorb them when they get older.”

Students themselves do not consider themselves deprived of high-techs. They sometimes watch movies, play computer games. Children say that they are even disappointed when they see their parents or relatives enmeshed in different devices.

Source: igor-grek.com