Tech workers reject screens in schools—but can public distri

Tech workers in Silicon Valley are pulling their children from screen-heavy classrooms and enrolling them in low-tech schools – a stark contradiction to the industry's push to digitise education globally. German Gil, a software engineer who has worked at Netflix, Facebook and GitHub, moved his daughter to a school emphasising hands-on learning over devices. This pattern is repeating across Bay Area private institutions, which now market tech-free or tech-limited curricula as a premium offering. Public schools in the same region lack the resources to follow. The divergence raises a hard question: if the people building digital products don't want their own children using them in school, what does that signal about edtech's actual pedagogical value – and who bears the cost of that scepticism? Low-income districts, already under-resourced, will likely intensify their reliance on the very tools affluent families are rejecting. This is less about technology itself and more about unequal access to choice. Wealthy parents can opt out; everyone else absorbs the default. The story also exposes a credibility gap within ESG frameworks – tech companies often cite education investment and digital inclusion in their impact reporting, yet their own workforce distrusts the product in classrooms. That tension deserves scrutiny from investors and governance bodies evaluating tech sector claims around social benefit.

Silicon Valley parents want the tech they help build out of their children’s schools

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