“computer & waldorf education with eugene schwartz”€¦ · “computer & waldorf...

“Computer & Waldorf Education”

“Computer & Waldorf Education with Eugene Schwartz”

Donna: Hi, this is Donna Ashton with the Waldorf Connection. Today we have a special guest, Eugene Schwartz, and he’s going to be talking about computers, internet, social networking and how they all fit in with Waldorf Homeschooling.

I think it’s going to be a very interesting topic today. Again, if you guys have any questions and you're on the phone, you can press “* 2” and that will raise your hand; we can take live questions. Or if you are on the internet, you can type a question in the Q&A box, and we’ll try to get to your questions as we go along.Let me just, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Eugene, let me give you a little brief background, and then we’ll get into the call. He’s got a lot of amazing information to bring to you.He is a graduate of Columbia University. Eugene Schwartz has worked with all stages of life; from the young child to the elderly. He began his teaching career by adopting the Waldorf School curriculum to educate a group of handicapped and emotionally-disturbed adolescents, after which he became a class teacher at the Green Meadow Waldorf School. After many years of service to Green Meadow, Eugene now works worldwide as an educational consultant and lecturer. He currently serves as a fellow of the Research Institute for Waldorf Education.

Welcome so much, Eugene.Eugene: Thank you very much Donna. It’s very nice to be here.Donna: Glad to have you here. We’ve got quite a few people listening so I hope we get some good questions. You’ve got sort of a controversial topic here, talking about computers and Waldorf.Eugene: Yes, I know.

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Donna: This stuff doesn’t seem to go together. (laughs)Eugene: Oil and water (laughs) Donna: You’ve probably gotten a lot of questions over the years, or heard a lot about people asking about, “When is the appropriate time to (Eugene agrees) use a computer and should I let them?” and “How much should they be using?” I’d love to hear the information and your take on that.Eugene: Media altogether is a huge question in our time in all schools and Waldorf Schools are famous or notorious for their very strict policies about media. I think when a homeschooling parent takes on the Waldorf curriculum, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it includes strong feelings that they really want to get their child many, many alternatives to just being exposed to every kind of media; be it radio and television from the good old days, or more recently: iPhones, iPads, iPods and all of the social networking and thousands of other things that assail children today on the internet. Usually, you can count on the fact that though Waldorf homeschoolers come from a wide background; ethnically, religiously, politically, or whatever, but most of the times, they're pretty adamant that they don’t want their children to be digesting that junk food diet that the media offers.

So, what am I doing talking about it and saying, “in conjunction with Waldorf (laughs) Education?” This is a common question that I get when I do a conference and homeschooling parents are there, or when I get phone calls, because I also do phone consultation with homeschoolers. The question goes like this; I’ll make it composite. “We are a homeschooling family. We have three children; our oldest has just turned thirteen, or is twelve-and-a-half. We have been educating her for eight, nine years using the Waldorf curriculum, and Waldorf methods. We live in a beautiful mountainside in California (phone rings in the background) in a farm. We milk our own cows; she’s never been exposed to anything but the most beautiful nature. And now, she insists




that we get a computer. She wants to go on the internet.” And then, their question is, “Where we failed? What did we do wrong? What didn’t we give her?” My answer is always, “You haven’t failed. If she’s twelve, if she’s thirteen, if she’s (laughs) fourteen or thereabouts, this shows you have done the right thing.” Beyond whether I tell them, “Yes, give it to her.” But the fact that the child is asking that question, and of course, at that age, questions are usually not asked, but demands are made. (Donna laughs) This shows something very healthy is going on. I know that Lynn Jericho, among others, just spoken very beautifully about these sort of higher bodies that come into the child. I would say that what you are experiencing round about twelve, which would be grade six in the Waldorf School, is that the astral body is now beginning to incorporate, and that is the diametrical opposite of the etheric body, which has been the dominant part of the child’s nature. The etheric body, which is the child from six to twelve, craves order, regularity, security; is very happy in the home and the heart; loves to milk cows and take long nature walks. All of the wonderful things that parents working with Waldorf Education lets flow into the classroom experience, it’s great and it’s wonderful. What the family decides is what the child will accept in those years. If that went on in another year or two though, if that child simply went along that way, something is not really coming into them that should. Which is what is going to result not only in feistiness and premature cries for independence and defiance and all of that, that’s all the shadow of it. But underneath it all, or above it all, is a life of ideals, a life of intellect, a life of independent inquiry; all of the things that we want. In fact, I’d say that Waldorf Education done well actually stimulates an even more demanding, more defiant side of the astral body. So it’s not that Waldorf Education




makes things easier between you and your child, but what it does is to really bring new steps. It’s always in a way not only asking that you master new subjects every year, but that you realize child development is not a simple slow like a calm river. It’s much more of a tumultuous storm that now and then you’ve got some calm spots, but then there are the rapids (Donna agrees) and the rapids in the river is where the oxygen comes in. That’s where the water gets refreshed and so on. That’s what’s going on at this stage. I'm specifically pointing to the twelve, thirteen year old, but I'm not saying if you’ve got a seven or eight year old, you don’t have to worry about it. Rather, forewarned is forearmed. It’s good to think about it no matter what age your child is. (Donna agrees)That’s one aspect; that there’s no need to panic if the child is wishing for this and demanding it. Secondly, the other thing that we in the Waldorf Educational look for is, is the child at this age opening up to new social relationships? That the family is no longer enough, even if there are many siblings. They want something new, they want a larger group. So I often advise parents that by this age, it’s good if you work with other homeschoolers in the area. Maybe your child starts to enroll in different programs offered by a local community center, or museum, or a teaching farm or something like that. That now is the time for your child to get out of the house, to get in the world, and to start to meet peers. Of course, this rightfully can strike fear in the heart of many a conscientious homeschooling parent because who knows what’s out there?

But in a way, we have to recognize that a healthy child, number one, really loves the world. For them, in a way, everything is good and everything is going to teach them something. And secondly, if you work the right way with the Waldorf curriculum, your child may have much more of a suit or armor on than you realize.




The stereotype is often that Waldorf kids are turned into hothouse flowers and they can’t survive the slightest cold wind because they’re so open and so vulnerable. There’s some truth to this inwardly, but it also is the case, and I know this from having taught classes of over, altogether I've educated about a hundred-twenty kids, I think, over the years, and seen many, many others in schools that I've visited and watched them grow up. Some of my alumni are in their forties, others in their thirties, others in their twenties, they can beat the world. They're strong enough to do it. But now, we have this new element; it’s not just the world, it’s not just kids in the playground, it’s not just who’s at the desk. But now, it’s the world of thousands, tens of thousands, potentially millions of people, who are trying to get your child to buy something or to do something, or to agree to something, or whatever.Of course, we have to be, much, much more vigilant than ever before. But I would say, vigilance and becoming aware of what’s out there in the way of media, and I'm going to speak about this in a few moments, is very different from fear, and from just absolutely denying it. Because especially for homeschooling kids, maybe don’t feel that they have the big group that they’d meet in a local junior high or something like that. For them, the internet becomes even more of a means of meeting others of their group, of their peer group. And if any of you remember back when you were twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and you just so desperately wanted to listen to the music that everybody else your age was listening to. That music when you can sing those songs, or you could wear those clothes, that made you part of the world of your generation. A number of kids don’t imagine themselves as part of a generation, as part of a group beyond their family or their close friends. But with this coming of the astral body, suddenly, you connect yourself with a group that numbers in the tens of millions.




The internet, in a way, is a reflection of this. I'm not saying it’s an accurate reflection, or it’s the best way to do it, but there’s no question that there’s something meaningful in the young person’s wish to explore that world, to surf that world or to seek what they can connect with. This is where we open up to the question of social media in particular. I'm going to speak about this in a little while. I just want to go back a little bit in a moment. I just want to know Donna; if there are any questions or any thing’s come up while I've been speaking?Donna: Okay, let’s see here. We’ve got a couple of things. I'm just going to see if it’s related to what you're saying or we’re going to take it at the end. Go ahead and go on, and I’ll just…Eugene: Now, as a Waldorf Teacher, one is always connecting things to their origins. Whenever we study something, be it farming, or house-building, or later on, auto mechanics or the invention of the electrical light, you want to go back. Who were the people who made that happen? And this is important, especially I think, with the whole world of computers in general, and the internet specifically. Because it seems to be something that’s there like a phenomenon of nature. We don’t say who made the clouds move in the sky. And it’s almost like that with the internet. Of course, it’s hard for those people not fifty or over to remember the times when there wasn’t anything at all like the internet around and people had other ways of socializing. But I want to go back. There are lots of incremental steps going back to the middle ages really, that led to the development of the modern computer. But I want to speak about one which is I think very main to the issue of social media. The original tube that used to be there when the computer screen looked more like a television, an old-fashioned television screen, this was the Cathode Ray Tube or CRT. This is not been around really all that long. It goes back maybe about a hundred thirty years now at the most.




It came about because a brilliant scientist physicist named William Crooks lost his younger brother. His brother died, Crooks mourned him deeply, and as was the style in those days, even the most educated and sophisticated scientists basically believed that by going to a séance and working with a spiritualist, you could link up with the dead.Crooks did this, but he was not impressed. He didn’t really feel that what they were doing was real. But he felt, I can find a way to meet my brother, and this is how he thought about it. If we on the earth who live need oxygen, need air to breath to live, that’s the first thing that brings us to life, and that’s the last thing that we lose, therefore the dead must live in a vacuum.So he created, using a very powerful vacuum pump, he evacuated a glass tube, a large glass tube. He got a nearly perfect vacuum and then he began to generate an electrical charge, which was invisible through that vacuum tube. As it happened, even though the charge was invisible, as he was evacuating the tube and there was less and less air, more and more light phenomena had begun to appear in that tube. It began to glow whitish, yellowish and then this beautiful purple, violet light shone through it. And when it was a nearly perfect vacuum, the light in it was ethereal; it was like looking at the northern lights.For a long time, Crooks was convinced that disembodied spirits were living in that light and that he was meeting them and communicating with them. It was only later that he realized, “No, this is something very different.” It’s a physical phenomenon, purely.But I bring this up because it’s interesting that the beginning of this cathode ray tube, which was then to lead to the possibility of their being images on the computer as well as simply things that were on reels of magnetic tape and typed down on a typewriter. But the possibility of putting images there and finally even color images, as the Apple Company developed, it was originally the work done by William Crooks,




creating in a way, something that was truly social media. It was going to so social that you didn’t even have to be alive to take part in it. (Donna laughs)So it’s interesting that that leads there in the invention itself. I certainly remember in the nineteen fifties, when my family was the first or second family on our block in New York City to own a television set, that you really felt the people on the set were talking to you. It was not just that you were watching something passively, but there was the feeling that you were meeting people and you cared about them and they somehow cared about you as well. It became very impersonal very quickly.I thing that’s coming back on the computer and it certainly is a bell weather, it’s a barometer telling us, “Okay, my child really is looking for social experiences. (Donna agrees) What do I do about it? How do I work with this?” The statistics about these things are really alarming, and you can find them, interestingly, all over the internet. All kinds of warnings about, that something like fourteen teenagers who go on the internet will eventually meet somebody face to face, and it’s often not another teenager who is communicating with them. There are all of these certainly big, dark spots, all over this medium of light.But here are some suggestions that I would make. First of all, first and foremost, that you as parents, though you may yourself have real antipathy to all of this social media stuff, that you have to learn how it works. You have to go on yourself and see what it’s all about and what the fuss is about. And it’s also really good if you understand something even of the mechanics and the electronics of the computer. That in a way, you're not only seeing what’s there on the screen, the interface, but that you know what’s going on. You know how that signal that your child is sending out into cyberspace, where it’s going, how it gets worked. It’s a remarkable, incredible device, and what’s almost most remarkable about it is that the whole infrastructure, the way the signals are transmitted, let’s say from London to San Francisco, or from Chicago to Shanghai,




it’s basically using the cables and the infrastructure that was there already a hundred fifty years ago, when the telegraph was invented and was quickly sending signals all over the world. It’s not as wireless as we believe. It depends a great deal on cables under the water, under the earth. They follow in fact the railroad tracks that were in place in the 1860s. Talking to your child, your twelve or thirteen-year-old, about how the internet works, you’re actually going to give them a wonderful history of the development of communication systems over time and why the telegraph replaced the pony express and how the pony express had replaced the individual courier and so on. You can make it into a whole main lesson block if you work that way with your children. That’s important; that you get to know how it works and secondly, that you spend a month or so on it yourself, getting into social media just to see what the experience is like and how and why it’s used.So that you're showing your young person that you are interested in the world as well. I can forewarn you, all of you who don’t have children, students of this age yet, that when they get to be twelve, thirteen and fourteen, the only way that they’ll accept you as even a bit of an authority anymore as a teacher, is if they feel you really know your stuff. And that you don’t only know it, but you love it and you're interested in it.The Waldorf curriculum at this age specifies Physics and Chemistry and History of the Modern World, and the History of Science. This is perfect; it’s like the computers will pull you into it even if it’s kicking and screaming. That’s one thing.Secondly, I would say, be vigilant. That most of the problems that teachers and parents share with me, with social media in particular, has to do with one basic issue, which is lack of parental supervision. As a homeschooling parent, you're already much more involved than the average parent is or can be, perhaps, just by their life circumstances. But you're facing a




very, very powerful and very clever competitor for your child’s attention in the media. You can only be in one place at one time, I imagine. (Donna laughs) The social media can be on a phone, on an iPod, on a computer, for all we know, they’ll soon be in implanted chips (laughs) in your child’s head or arm or whatever. (Donna laughs)They're all-pervasive. Certainly, I know, I go into a local supermarket or my bank, and there’s a computer screen, and it’s hooked up to the internet, and it’s transmitting news about sales or bank interest rates. But it’s also giving local news which all is horrible local news imaginable. And there it is; I'm transfixed. I have to look at it while I'm waiting to make a deposit or something like that. You’ve really got to be awake, how much it may be that by now, and I think it’s not a bad thing if you're teaching your child how to do research on the internet. Maybe you go to your local library and they have five books and the rest of it is internet stuff. You’ve got to learn how to do that; you have to teach your child how to do it. But then, to make sure that you know where your child is, on the internet. Because it just takes a click of a link, and it opens up a whole world. And almost always, when kids get themselves in trouble with social media issues: bullying, being a victim, whatever, it’s usually because their parents just were not present, were unaware of how deeply involved the child was. Here’s an issue that comes up very often. I hear this several times a month when I'm visiting schools. The child says to the parent, “If you're hanging around when I'm on the internet all the time, and you have one of these programs where you can tell where I’ve been, you can follow my keystrokes and all of that, you're spying on me. And you’ve always said that you respect me as a person and one reason that you're homeschooling me is because you know me so well and we really have this wonderful -” they're going to pull out every stop they can, to make you feel so totally guilty.




Suddenly you’ve lost the issue of the internet and social networking and now it’s all in your corner. You're like this evil CIA agent or something, spying on them non-stop. What do you do if something like this comes up?

Here’s the answer that I suggest. That you say to your child, “Okay, it would be one thing if I had a camera in your room which was constantly monitoring your every action. I would feel really uncomfortable (laughs) and I know you would as well. I would never do that; of course not. But let’s say that on our street, there’s been some break-ins in houses. The police don’t quite know what to do about it. Everybody’s feeling a little bit uncomfortable. So we decide to install a surveillance device outside of our house, so that when somebody walks by, it’s motion sensitive, a light will go on, and we’re even going to film whatever’s going on at that time. To protect our house, to protect your room, to protect you. Would you feel that that was crazy to do that? No, no. Of course not, that’s (Donna agrees) a good idea. Well, that’s what I'm doing. I'm not checking up on you. I'm checking up on all that’s trying to break in on you via that screen, which is like a window into the world. But it’s a window that works both ways. I'm not just saying, ‘What are you doing?’ Social networking. I'm also saying, ‘What are those three billion other people doing?’ I just want to be sure that you may not be able to make the right judgment about what somebody is saying, or offering, or implying on the internet. And I may be a better judge of that. So I'm like (Donna agrees) a surveillance device pointed out into the world, not pointed back at you.” Donna: Have you found that to be a successful approach – (crosstalk)Eugene: I have heard feedback about that and the only feedback that I've been given about it has been very positive. So it may be that there’s been some negative responses as well, which I haven’t heard about. But people have said it was just, that their child smiled. That they just in a way – (crosstalk)




Donna: They may not, they still might not be happy with it, but they may understand a little more about what your reasons are for doing it, by giving them that analogy and having them go, “Oh, okay, so it’s not just about (crosstalk) it’s me they're trying to protect.”Eugene: Exactly. Even this often defiant rejection age that there’s still a big part of a young person that really does want to feel, my parents are still looking after me. My parents are still protecting me. My parents are still behind the scenes. It’s a very important part of the psychology of working with pubescent and particularly adolescent kids. That they have to know there’s a safety net. But now they want that safety net to be invisible. They want to be able to walk the talk with their friends. “My parents don’t care. I can do anything I want. They don’t know what’s going on.” (Donna agrees) But they want to know in their own hearts, “My parents do care; my parents know exactly what’s going; and they’ve got their standards and they're going to impose their standards. I'm really glad, because then I can blame it on them. Not me. I'm cool. (laughs) But my parents aren’t, and I have to do what they say.” I’ve certainly seen this, teaching sixth-graders, seventh-graders, eighth-graders. I’ve seen them in the high school years as well: how essential that is. How much health that really brings into their life, and a challenging time. Donna: How would you say this, like those video games relate. I know I see those kids at restaurants and everywhere with those little, and I'm so bad with, the latest was the Nintendo, those Gameboys, whatever they are now that are in their hands constantly – (crosstalk)Eugene: They’re very powerful. It tends; generally, there’s a kind of gender distinction with the internet and with computers. That girls tend to gravitate pretty quickly towards social media; that becomes their portal of choice into cyberspace. Boys are much more video games.




So it’s just interesting with the girl, it becomes a flowing out experience, that I want to be able to talk to all my friends, I want to know the parties that are going on, I want to share music. (Donna agrees) It’s the sort of growing out – (crosstalk)Donna: Like girls talking on the phone in the old days, I guess. (laughs)Eugene: Exactly, right. With the boy, it’s much more going in. It’s more, so many of the video games are, you're in a castle, or you're in a prison camp, or you're in a city that’s been devastated by nuclear war, and everywhere you turn, around every corner, every building, every alleyway, there’s something there ready to pounce on you in a way.So, with the boys, more of a labyrinthine, inner experience in a way. They are speaking, both the video game and the social networking, they're speaking very much to what in Waldorf we would call “real soul experience” as experiences of soul. And I would say that video games, many of them to this day, are still very strongly based on Greek myths, Norse myths; Norse myths have been a huge part of video game experience. They flow also into the world of the comic books, the Marvel Comics in particular, which have taken many mythological figures or figures who are like modern versions. The super hero is like a Hercules of the past (Donna agrees) would have been. So, I would just say, homeschooling parents, be sure in grade four and up, the Waldorf curriculum has incredible, deep, wonderful mythologies to these kids. To have them acting out those myths, to have them drawing them, to have them painting them, modeling the figures. That I think teachers altogether don’t really do enough with these great mythological content that are there, particularly grades four and five. It’s like their giving a foundation for the trials and tribulations of puberty and adolescence that will come in grade six. So I think that that is one aspect of it.




Give them a content that kids don’t have today, so they have to find it in video games. It’s really a craving for meaningful content on the one hand. On the other hand, I had a very interesting experience a couple of years ago, that for me shed a lot of light on what the videogame experience is about. It really involves, there’s been a lot or neurologists and psychologists who will say, “Video games are great! They make kids smarter. They ask for very quick reactions. They ask them to be able to multitask, to hold three or four different factors in their mind at once, and then to act on that. Certainly there are a lot of military people who say, “This is great! The video games are training and eleven and twelve year olds to be very effective soldiers in a few years.” (laughs) So it’s not to say that there’s nothing to them, there’s a lot there. But the experience that I had was going to a community that works with autistic and kids who’ve gotten themselves in major trouble with the law, and brings them into a crafts community where they do blacksmithing and stone work and fiber work and soap making. They do all of these old crafts. I got to work for a day in the glass-blowing studio. I saw what it took to blow glass. If you want to see multitasking and having to make very quick decisions when you're holding something that’s hundreds of degrees and melting just a few inches away from you, and you have to put it back in the kiln and you have to pull it back again and you have to blow into it and you have to cool it, you have to heat it. And meanwhile, three or four or ten other people are running around the room, doing the same thing, it’s like a dance. If you get too close to one of them, you're going to burn them seriously. If they get too close to you, they can wreck everything you’ve done. I was being taught how to do this by a sixteen-year old who had come there a year before, and had become a real master at this trade. And he was just having the greatest time with me, because I was so slow (laughs) and so clumsy (Donna




laughs) and he was like just a master of grace at this. I realized, “Wow! If we could do more of this, or if we could find a way – not everybody can set up a glass-blowing studio or a blacksmith forge in their home. (Donna agrees) But if we could find ways of having, of supporting crafts studios so that a whole region could use that, there again, because I think kids don’t get to do this anymore. All that we ask of our kids today is to turn a switch on and off, or put dishes in the dishwasher, or whatever.Even in a farm setting, in a way, things may not move fast enough and be exciting enough. And these crafts are really, really incredible. I think that’s what the video game is: it’s making all of the demands that blacksmithing, or pottery-making, or whatever, used to make on young people, when they had to take responsibility in life much faster than they do now. So I would say there again, the Waldorf curriculum definitely brings the possibility of getting good with your hands. Be it in knitting, and sewing, woodworking; but whatever crafts you could bring to your children, especially in these fourth to ninth-grade years, that’s I think another way of helping to give them the experiences that otherwise seems to be available only in video games today. (Donna agrees)Donna: Well, on the other end of the spectrum, I know I've got a question, and somebody else is asking similar (Eugene agrees) is how early can you start, or should you start, because you hear all the time about, they’ve got to learn those computers and I know they’ve got them in regular schools pretty early; the race to get everything going so early and all that. (Eugene agrees)

We wanted to know, what are the parameters, or what is your take on that?Eugene: Well, it’s interesting. Twenty years ago, the Apple Corporation in particular really, really pushed to school districts should Apple computers. And they did. What was it about? It was about computer literacy. Your child will not




succeed in the world unless he or she knows how to use a computer and how to type into it and all of that.I have not heard the phrase “computer literacy” in about ten or twelve years, because everybody knows it takes about ten minutes for a child, if that, (Donna agrees) to become computer literate. So okay, that’s gone.Now, they’ve got a really, get on the internet. They have to learn how to do research on the internet; they have to learn how to give PowerPoint reports so that they can really succeed in the world of business later on. It’s always going to be some kind of fear-based thing. If your child doesn’t learn today, they're going to be stuck forever and ever. But the reality is, whatever is there this year in computers, in the internet, is something fairly technical and arcane, that only a few number of people know, within two years, everybody and his kid brother’s going to know how to it. (Donna agrees)Because they learned it in school. But because it’s just out there and companies like Apple and Google and so on are trying to make it as easy as possible so that more and more people do it, and they can sell them more things. So in a certain way, there should be no panic whatsoever about children needing to learn any of this when they're very young.Because number one, they're essentially boring today. They're hard-wired as it were, to be able to do all of this stuff without even being able to think about it, (Donna agrees) and secondly because running a computer is right now on about the same level of complexity as turning on and off and electric light. (Donna agrees) It’s almost that level.When was the last time schools taught kids how to turn electric lights on and off, (Donna agrees, laughs) or even how to use the toaster, or how to use the microwave? These things are so much a part of your life and the child is so surrounded by it, that we need have no fear that they're going to learn about it.




Rather, I would say you want your child to be ready to use a computer and teach them as they're ready as it’s appropriate in the curriculum. Teach them what number systems are and how the binary system was developed by Leibnitz way back in the 17th century and everybody just said, “Very nice! But what are we going to ever do with this? Great invention, interesting, but there’s nothing we could do with it.” It took three hundred years for us to do something with that.

Talk about Lord Byron’s daughter, who was one of the brilliant mathematicians of her time in the early 1800s and how she figured out (crosstalk) how to create a computer. And teach them about Blaise Pascal, who figured out a calculating device. Charles Babbage and Allan Turing, the man who under the great pressure of World War II in the 1940s, had to rapidly develop the Enigma device, which cracked the Nazis Enigma code. So that for the Allies then, the war really took a big turn when he did this. And that device basically became the foundation for the modern computer.

If they see the human beings who were behind it, if they see the way the forces of history in a way, holds some things back for hundreds of years, and then suddenly the gates are open and everything rushes together, and you’ve got this invention which seems to come out of nowhere but is actually centuries in the making. That’s the best preparation to give young people for working with computers. To know what they are, and how the work. It’s not a black box. That they know what circuits are. They know what silicon is. They know why precious metals like gold and silver go into the making of computers. Why heavy metals are used in the screen to create the impression of color and all that. That’s the thing we can do. And that’s perfectly Waldorfian.That you really start with the inter-relationship of different fields of knowledge and educate kids. And I would just say something else, that though Waldorf Schools of




all educational institutions, are the ones that hold back the longest in introducing computers (clears throat) usually not until high school.Nonetheless, many, many Waldorf graduates have gone into the computer world and become very effective, high-powered programmers and working in all kinds of ways in Microsoft, in Apple, in Google and so on. So, it’s not like they're in any disadvantage. In fact, their bosses will tell them, “You're the most flexible thinker I’ve ever met. You're the most adaptable. You always think out of the envelope. You’ve always got a new solution.” (Donna agrees) And I think that’s the important thing, working with computers or anything.Donna: Right. Because that can be learned. Even I can learn the computer – anybody can really learn it now. Eugene: Yes, exactly. Why waste time in school teaching kids how to do something that they can probably already do a lot better than the teacher anyway? (Donna laughs) But rather teach them how to think about it. (crosstalk)Donna: As far as homeschooling, then what would you recommend? Just do some research and things that we will need to do, where we’re not in a Waldorf School setting. Is there a certain age you recommend; are you saying like twelve, thirteen, is an appropriate time?Eugene: I would say, if you could wait until mid-sixth grade, that would be ideal. I'm not trying to inspire guilt on the part of anybody in our audience who may have a younger child already doing something. I would say that’s the ideal, and I would say it’s something worth fighting for, but it may not be possible.And again, if you, as a parent, are sitting there, with your child at all times while they're using the computer, you will know what they are viewing. The main thing is, again, to go back to what Lynn shared some months ago, about these higher bodies of the human being.




That the etheric body of the child, which is still a dominant force up until age eleven and in many children, even up right up to puberty at age twelve, twelve-and-a-half – that etheric body is much more attacked by the media. Not just the content, but by the form, by the light comes, by the pixels, by all of that. It’s much more destructive in a way, for the younger child to be using those things. I'm not saying “destructive” in an alarmist way, but it’s really, in Steiner’s way of looking at the child, it’s a powerful thing. Once they come to puberty, they have another layer, and that’s the astral body. And the astral body is much more able to hold its own in the light of the stuff coming out of a computer, TV screen, movie, or whatever.

So the later, the better. Within reason. (crosstalk) Go ahead.

Donna: This is so funny because I just had this experience, just a few weeks ago, with my girls. Now they're about eight-and-a-half, and one of them really just starting to get into where she’s reading pretty well. I'm amazed at how much – I know we’re talking about computers and stuff, but when you're driving down the road, it’s just how much media is, with billboards and signs, and everything. (Eugene agrees) She made a comment while we were driving, and she said, “Mommy, I didn’t realize that there’s all these words now that I have to read. I see them everywhere now.” (Eugene laughs) Before, she was just oblivious to it, just looking out the window (Eugene agrees) or whatever, but now, she’s like, “I feel like I have to read it. I just have to close my eyes.”I was like, (Eugene exclaims) “Oh my gosh! I know what you mean.” (laughs)Eugene: Good for her. Good for her. She realized (crosstalk) it’s a sensory overload. Yes. If you live a little further north on the Atlantic coast Donna, you would see that the billboards are computer screens as well. (Donna agrees) So every ten seconds, it’s a new message.




If you're driving 45 an hour, and you get three messages on each board, it’s a lot of reading, and its telling you things, tonight on TV, you’re going to see this.

It gives you the time, and it says, “Head for a cup of McDonald’s coffee. (Donna agrees, laughs) Again, this is why, to feel, we can just shelter our children and hold back from that, you’d really, really have to live on that fabled desert island. Donna: You would. If you venture out, it’s out there. Even I go, “Gosh! These signs are driving me crazy. But it is; it’s just everywhere. And some signs are even just not appropriate to see. Or just like you said, advertising things or whatever. But it is everywhere. Eugene: And there’s much less self-censorship on the part of the advertisers, and just an altogether more tolerant feeling. I'm astonished at some of the words that show up on these billboards. (Donna agrees) Here, we’re west of Philadelphia, and, okay, in Philadelphia, I would expect words like that. But outside of it, I'm shocked. So, it’s really, one sees how much one really wants to give children alternatives to all of that, and strengthen those forces that they're going to need because that stuff is just out there and it’s not (Donna agrees) going to go away. Donna: You can’t, like you said, shelter them, but having that balance to where they can come back to some place where they're not getting all of that, or balancing it out with nature, where they can get relieved. I feel the same way sometimes, where I'm just like, “Ugh, I have to just close my eyes and just turn it off .” (Eugene agrees)Well, I do have a question. You sort of talked about it a little bit here, but I'm going to ask it here because she’s asking, let’s see, she has a sixth-grade and eighth-grade boys – this is Chris from Alaska. She said, “What are your feelings on students using math or reading programs via the computer?” She is using Teaching




Textbooks for Math. And I have heard a lot about math supplements, and you probably have too.Eugene: Yes. I have. When you're talking about an eighth-grader, no problem. As long as they're also getting to do some pencil and paper thing. Because there’s a lot that we learn even as adults, through our hands, through our limbs. So it’s still a different thing, doing a computation on a computer screen where you're just moving a mouse around, or putting in a few keystrokes, or writing out and and working with borrowing and carrying, or whatever, or roughing out an equation using paper and pencil stuff, but certainly, there’s great stuff out there. Donna: Eugene, I think we’re losing you a little bit. Are you on a cell phone?Eugene: Sorry. Okay. I’ll walk around a little. How is it?Donna: I didn’t really hear much about it. It was sort of breaking up a little.Eugene: I was saying that it’s most important that definitely, eighth-grade, seventh to eighth-grade, to use some of these computer programs, internet programs, for learning things, it’s fine. But don’t abandon also doing math problems with pencil and paper. Because a young person, anybody, and old person as well, learns a lot through their hands. Just the movement of the hands, the writing, of the numbers and all of that. But definitely, these educational programs have improved greatly and there are some wonderful teachers out there who’ve done things. And of course, because it’s a computer, a kid will take it more seriously perhaps than what a teacher is doing. Yes, sixth grade may be too soon, but you really will have to see. But always follow it up with some work in reality as well, not just virtual. Something on paper, and always something artistic to accompany it, which helps to counter-balance the kind of dead side of the internet.Donna: She’s also asking, “What about Kindles for older students?” Eugene: Definitely. Absolutely. There are Kindles or iPads with the eBooks that are on them. These things are turning non-readers into readers. Because what’s




important about the difference in the iPad book and the Kindle book; and this has been a matter of a lot of debate for some time now. Kindle uses reflected light. What it’s doing is creating kind of a virtual page so you can’t read it in the dark; you need to have a lamp just as you would a book. For some kids, that’s the way they like to read. They're still getting the feeling that this is a computer, or something electronic, and they like that. The iPad is a very different experience. It’s radiant light. The light is coming through the screen and that’s why it’s always illuminated. You can go into a dark room and read your iPad. It won’t work as well in bright sun, where a Kindle will.I bring this up because there are some kids who hate reading, hate books, have a hard time opening them up. They turn on an iPad and they become voracious readers. And it has much more to do with the way the light is being transmitted.

So there are some kids who are going to be Kindle readers, and some kids who are going to be iPad readers. You need to try both. The iPad works just like a computer screen, which is also radiant light. And Joseph Chilton Pearce, that great writer on the brain and the mind and all of that, he is very insistent that the human being is not designed to learn by a radiant light. He says we only learn things; we can only assimilate information that bounces off a page or a painting or something like that.I disagree with him, because for a few hundred years in the Middle Ages, a big chunk of European humanity was learning about the world through stained glass windows. And that’s radiant light. So there are, I think, some children today who are really predisposed to learn that way and it’s a good thing to try. Again, it’s going to get overrated and of course, now, Apple’s always behind the stuff. This is going to revolutionize education and everybody’s going to be brilliant. They said that twenty years ago, when computers were brought into the classroom. And nothing seems to have changed that much.




But definitely, there are some kids who will read for the first time with joy when they use Kindle or an iPad.Donna: Hmm. That was a good thing. I think we just about got all the questions. I want to save some time for you to talk about your special offer for our group. So why don’t you go ahead and give us the information on that.Eugene: Donna has put a link to that on the screen you're looking at. Donna: Right. If you're on the webcast, you’ll have a screen. If you're listening to this on the replay, there should be a link there for you so that you can click over. Eugene: For a number of years now – Donna: I think we’re losing you.Eugene: Are you losing me, or am I okay?Donna: There you are. (laughs) You're back.Eugene: Okay. I have to be in just the right place in the room. I've been offering CDs. Many of the CDs are recordings of lectures that I've given on aspects of education. I have about seventy titles or so now. And I also have a series of eight CD ROMS which are filled with hundreds and hundreds of drawing, paintings, illustrations and compositions that children have done over the years in their main lesson books.Many, many homeschoolers use those. All the elements of Waldorf Schools. Elements of Waldorf Education. Each one is one grade. People find it gives them some idea of what they can expect a fourth-grader can do, or a sixth-grader can do. It gives them an idea of how long a composition can be and so on. Whereas the lectures are more about child development and what you as a teacher, classroom or homeschool, whatever, need to know and what you can do to find out areas in which you feel your strengths aren’t there.What I'm doing in conjunction with today’s telecast is to offer twenty-four CDs at a thirty percent discount. You don’t have to buy all twenty-four (Donna laughs) but




twenty-four different titles, the whole series on the elements with student work, and then another fifteen which are about aspects of child development, which I think, any of them and all of them, will probably be very helpful for many of those listening today. So for the next two weeks, right up to March thirty-first, you go to the dedicated webpage. They’re actually four pages altogether; there’s a link at the bottom of each one, leading you on to the next, or going back to the previous. You can have a look at those. There are PayPal buttons; they're all downloads, and they’ll come to you very quickly after they’ve been ordered.Donna: Great. That sounds wonderful. I'm sure there’s a lot of information in there that everybody could use. I like the idea of looking at some of the other work; that’s real helpful on the visual person too. To see what – and you can really get an idea of what you can expect – (crosstalk)Eugene: And I should mention also on that website, you’ll see a lot of tabs. There are free podcasts of about fifteen main lectures or more. There are links under a tab called Videos to about twenty-five or more free videos; some of them lectures, some of them specific introductions to Waldorf Education. There are slide shows; there are many, many articles that you can just download. So it’s filled with hours and hours of free resources as well, (Donna cheers) which thousands of homeschoolers have used.Donna: You don’t need a code or anything to purchase?Eugene: You’ll just see that when you go on the Sale page, you’ll see the tabs at the top and click on them, and you're good to go.Donna: Great. That makes it simple. And again, I’ll have all this information up on the replay page. If you're on the webcast right now, you will be able to click right over. Which is millennialchild and you can check the replay page for the offer and the link over there.




So everything will be all right there on my website and I’ll be sending that link out here shortly. Thank you so much Eugene. This has been wonderful, so much information. I'm sure we could talk about this for a few more hours (laughs) but you covered a lot of great information. I just am very honored and so appreciative that you came to talk to our group today. Thank you so much.Eugene: Thank you very much Donna, and thanks to all of you who listened in, or who will be listening when it’s replayed. And best wishes Donna.

Thank you.Donna: Okay. Thanks.

Bye-bye.Eugene: Goodbye.Donna: Bye everybody.

-End of Call-



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