Hey, teachers, leave those kids alone
Via Bubba, we learn that a California school is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move:
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.
But some parents see a system that can monitor their children’s movements on campus as something straight out of Orwell.
As they should. Some more:
“There is a way to make kids safer without making them feel like a piece of inventory,” said Michael Cantrall, one of several angry parents who complained. “Are we trying to bring them up with respect and trust, or tell them that you can’t trust anyone, you are always going to be monitored, and someone is always going to be watching you?”
Cantrall said he told his children, in the 5th and 7th grades, not to wear the badges. He also filed a protest letter with the board and alerted the ACLU.
Graham, who also serves as the superintendent of the single-school district, told the parents that their children could be disciplined for boycotting the badges — and that he doesn’t understand what all their angst is about.
“Sometimes when you are on the cutting edge, you get caught,” Graham said, recounting the angry phone calls and notes he has received from parents.
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.
Egad. Up next, finding a way to permanently affix the badges?
February 11th, 2005 at 7:02 pm
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February 10th, 2005 at 12:41 pm
They’re getting them used to it (Big Brother) now so they won’t think twice about accepting it later in life.
February 10th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
yea. I have a problem with this because it can also be used by child preadotors to tell when the children walk by his door.
that info is not encrypted anyone can read it.
February 10th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
Wouldn’t it be great if 1984 was on their reading list?
February 10th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
They have a right and an obligation to know where the kids are. Just because they have a better way to do it is no reason to oppose it. If just one life is saved…..
February 10th, 2005 at 2:34 pm
Wow, just wow. Just when I think that we have reached bottom, something like this comes up and shows me that some want to get a backhoe and dig deeper. What really astounds me is that the superintendent is surprised that parents would be offended by this.
February 10th, 2005 at 9:56 pm
hmmm…i wonder when we will be forced to get bar code tattos on our necks…?
February 11th, 2005 at 4:55 am
You know, a nice jamming signal would probably ruin their whole day…
February 11th, 2005 at 10:27 am
So would half the parents pulling their kids out of school to home-school…
February 13th, 2005 at 10:03 am
Yep, they’ll have to permanently affix them. Otherwise they’ll have teachers wondering why there are only six students in the room while the system shows a full roster of 30.
Maybe some of the teachers will be smart enough to explain it to the principal…