Oliver links to this Talk Left post discussing this article:
The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will take away their children’s privacy.
The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on Jan. 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory. Similar devices have recently been used to monitor youngsters in some parts of Japan…
The system was imposed, without parental input, by the school as a way to simplify attendance-taking and potentially reduce vandalism and improve student safety. Principal Earnie Graham hopes to eventually add bar codes to the existing ID’s so that students can use them to pay for cafeteria meals and check out library books…
Each student is required to wear identification cards around their necks with their picture, name and grade and a wireless transmitter that beams their ID number to a teacher’s handheld computer when the child passes under an antenna posted above a classroom door.
Graham also asked to have a chip reader installed in locker room bathrooms to reduce vandalism, although that reader is not functional yet. And while he has ordered everyone on campus to wear the badges, he said only the 7th and 8th grade classrooms are being monitored thus far…
I don’t understand what’s the problem with tracking where minor children are? There’s a lotta sickos out there, why not know where kids are? Do 5th and 7th graders need privacy to such an insane degree? Next thing you’ll be saying parents can’t search their kids’ rooms for drugs.
In the annals of bad ideas, this rates right up near the top, and I think the problem is quite evident- It is WHO is doing the monitoring, and it is what the children will learn form this type of behavior.
The school has decided to undertake this little Orwellian tagging system for its own uses, without the input of the family or the child. It would be another situation altogether if the parents were given the opportunity to opt out, although I would still be rabidly against the system. However, this particular school system is now in the position of forcing children to attend their school, and then to be forced to have their right to privacy infringed upon by an authoritarian system.
While this system is onerous and odious enough, the potential abuses are widespread. Let’s even put aside the presumption that children, young adults, deserve the right to be able to go to the bathroom without being monitored. How long will it be before widescale and even more invasive monitoring of the children begins. Two scenarios:
A.) The Principle suspects an individual student may be involved in some sort of criminal activity- let’s say selling pot. Searches of the student and his/her locker turn up nothing. How long will it be before the principle is monitoring the child, tkaing notes who the child associates with and when. How long before the principle is monitoring a group of students. How long before the id/tracking bracelet is no longer a means of protecting the child, but an intrusive device for pernicious investigations that would outrage any adult? How long before the harassment begins?
B.) A student is doing poorly in school. His/her parents ask the principle to monitor the student’s behavior. The principle then observes the student spends little time in the library, opting to spend free time during the school day in the gym, socializing in the cafeteria, etc. The Principole reports this back to the parents, and/or interrogates the student himself/herself.
These are no wild eyed hypotheticals, and if you are honest with yourself, you will probably admit that the authorities have probably already thought of the first scenario. If traffic light camerass upset you off, this should give you a stroke.
There are a myriad opf reasons in the paragraphs above not to use this technology, but even more important than those are the awful messages that the utilization of this technology sends to children. And really, while 7th and 8th graders are legally children, they are, in large part, young adults, and should be treated as such. We already are pushing these young adults into permanent stages of arrested development with our overbearing rules in schools, our zero tolerance policies, but this takes things to a new level.
If we continue to treat children as possessions, if we continue to instill values that our antithetical to freedom and our cherished expectations of privacy, we are creating the monster that will lead to the end of our freedoms and our liberties as we know them. This is not hysterical fear-mongering on our part- children and young adults when they mature, will engage in the behaviors they have been taught during their formidable years. This is not speculation, this is fact- this is why we spend so much effort trying to instill morals and values in our children. This is why we spend a great amount of energy and money every year trying to teach respect for individuals. This is why we spend a great deal of classtime every year teaching civics and history and American government. We must be careful to teach the right values, in and out of the classroom.
Recently, civil libertarians were rightly and justifiably up in arms with a national survey commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation which reported the following chilling tidbits of information:
– Nearly three-fourths of high school students either do not know how they feel about the First Amendment or admit they take it for granted.
– Seventy-five percent erroneously think flag burning is illegal.
– Half believe the government can censor the Internet.
– More than a third think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.
As Knight Foundation President and CEO Hodding Carter III noted,
CadillaqJaq
If you think our youngsters today are shortchanged as to the workings and responsibilities of our government, please know it doesn’t stop in the elementary schools. I watched an attempted interview between FOX-TV News John Gibson and two of Ward Churchill’s college students last week… I became nearly as aghast and frustrated as Gibson in listening to their disjointed point of view. Talk about scary. And these are our future leaders?
The Lonewacko Blog
I’m having trouble telling the difference nowadays, but I thought ODub was being sarcastic. If not, I guess his thoughts about these types of matters are in line with his thoughts about other things.
I wouldn’t, however, put much faith in the Knight survey. That only concerns the “government approval of news stories” question, but the other questions might have similar flaws.
shark
LOL Oliver sees no problem with this but the idea of a national ID card or stricter requirements to register to vote or obtain a drivers license probably send him into fits of hysteria….
S.W. Anderson
I can’t say I favor this system, but that’s not because of the Orwellian prospects you hold out for it.
The first negative that comes to my mind is that some unscrupulous teachers will abuse it by letting PITA punks disappear once they’ve registered as having entered the room. The school gets credit for that student’s attendance, but the teacher is relieved of having to contend with him or her.
The second negative is that I suspect it won’t take long for enterprising students to figure out various ways to game the system.
As far as the regimentation and Big Brother aspects, did you notice that it does not track the students’ movements? It simply registers that they enter a classroom, maybe that they exit as well. It also doesn’t ID the student beyond name and grade. I fail to see how the ID tag system is substantially different from having a teacher take and record attendance.
An elementary school I attended, and for awhile, the high school I went to, required signed passes to be in the hallway during class periods. The principal, vice principal and/or designated teachers would cruise the halls and any student they happened on would have to show a pass. Trouble came to those caught without a pass. Trips to the john that seemed to take too long invited, at the least, embarrassing questions and comments.
Those kinds of regulation and regimentation are characteristic of the K-12 school environment, going way back. I just don’t see how using what is basically just an automated counting device presents such a threat to freedom and privacy.
Could such a system change over time into something sinister? Yes, but so could lots of other things. You could have a homicidal maniac working in the cafeteria poison the pudding. But the fact such a thing could happen isn’t grounds for shutting down all school cafeterias.
If tracking students’ movements within the school is unacceptable to parents, they should prohibit the administration from allowing that feature to be implemented. If the superintendent violates the prohibition, fire him or her.
S.W. Anderson
Re: The survey report showing a dismal lack of knowledge about and regard for First Amendment rights and protections.
Now here is something to be upset about. It just seems unbelievable.
If schools can do nothing else, they ought to at least get three things right every time: 1, teach students to appreciate the value of being educated; 2, teach everyone to read well; and 3, teach everyone their basic rights and responsibilities as citizens.
Obviously, the First Amendment is a big component of No. 3.
Matthew
The survey is a bit deceptive, considering it is polling kids who havent learned about policies like government censorship yet. Keep in mind most kids take world history for grades 9-10, American History in grade 11, and they dont take civics/American government, where they would actually have the importance of the First Amendment explained to them, until grade 12. So half to three-quarters of the students surveyed have little other background to the intricacies and complicated wordings of the survey than what they’ve learned at home. Not that these numbers are good, but it adds a bit of perspective.
Maureen
The difference between hall monitors and electronic tracking is human dignity.
Kimmitt
Dag, I felt enough like a prisoner when I went to high school.
S.W. Anderson
Maureen wrote: “The difference between hall monitors and electronic tracking is human dignity.”
Indeed. And recalling a couple hall monitors of my past acquaintance, an ID tag and quiet, nonjudgmental counting device by the door would represent a giant step toward enjoying human dignity.
wild bird
Welome to the school run by big brother and here comes 1984 were in a mess the school should be barred from putting these tracking devices on kids without the parent permission its like a few years ago when a school in New Jersey was asking personal queations from some kids without parential concent
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