Webcams Watching The Classrooms?

embarcadero writes "Webcams will be tuned to watch over 500 classrooms in the Biloxi, Mississippi school district this year, according to a story in USA Today. The goal is to make classrooms safer, but there's a lot of speculation about how the recorded info could be used for or against teachers in disputes or teaching reviews. I can just see Mrs. Waters pointing towards the camera, 'If I don't catch you cheating on this spelling test, that camera will! Don't even think about it.'"

Comments

This is not good.

[mjmalone]

Schools have been given, under U.S. law, the right to act in place of parents while children are in attendance. Sometimes they take it too far. The one group of citizens in the U.S. that has the least rights and is oppressed and discriminated against the most are children. When I was in high school I had a friend tell once she was asked to take a breathalizer at a gas station while refilling her car by a police officer. When she asked what she had done wrong the officer replied that it was night time, she was under age, and she was chewing gum. He said that was enough of a reason for him to force her to take a breathalizer.

Anyways, back on-topic. If your boss threatened to point cameras at you in your workplace and fire employees who he observed slacking wouldn't you be concerned? If your employer did so at least you would have the option of leaving due to privacy concerns, schoolchildren do not have this option.

I would also like to know how secure this system is. The article claims that the video can be viewed from any computer on the internet with proper authentication. There are serious security implications here, and schools have had notoriously lax security policies in the past.

Re:oh please.

[goliard]

Cameras will do anything BUT interfere with teaching. There are two possible scenarios: a) teachers begin to ignore the cameras and carry on as always or hopefully b) they will realize that the cameras are 100% coverage of their daily teaching and can be used for/against them during review time. They would hopefully improve their teaching and in-class behavior. This could only lead to a better teaching experience IMHO.

Really? Why on earth do you think that? You seem to be presuminng that good teaching is not against the rules. In my limited HS teaching experience (11th & 12th grade English) I regularly had to bend the rules to deliver the education the kids actually needed, instead of what the Powers That Be required. For instance, I had a HS Senior reading at a 4th grade level; I decided to assign her special material much below grade level to try and meet her where she was and get her to advance -- as opposed to pretending there was no problem and passing her just to make myself look good (which is how she made it to 12th grade with a 4th grade reading level, to begin with). I mention that because it was the least egregious case of rule-bending for the sake of education I can remember.

I presume that you think most teachers are slackers who need to be forced to really do their jobs. Actually, I mostly agree with that! But I hardly think surveillance will work; it mostly will cause them to slack off in ways which make them look busy: assigning reams of mindless redundant exercises, responding to questions with punative "assignments" meant to discourge future questions, etc. It's remarkably easy for a teacher to invent ways of appearing "educational" and "hard-working", which are just ways of goofing off.