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Student RFID Tracking Suspended from School
ewhac writes "As reported earlier, a Sutter County, CA, elementary school unilaterally took the dubious step of forcing students, under penalty of disciplinary action, to wear RFID badges with their name, grade, and photo. The RFID tags were read by sensors placed above classroom and bathroom doors (though the latter had been shut off). The system was ostensibly used to automate attendance-keeping. Well, InCom Corp., the company that provided the tech free of charge to the school, has abruptly pulled out, without explanation. The school superintendant claimed to be, "disappointed," at the development. However, some parents are not mollified, and vow to permanently keep such people-tracking technologies out of their schools."
Due to high demand, this company has no other option but to pull out from this school charity.
But seriously, businesses rarely do things for free, and it's unlikely any one would offer free services in exchange of bad PR.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Pussyfooting isn't the only answer...
Hey, a similar scheme seemed to work well at Hogwart's.
Mischief managed.
J
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
It's good that the corp pulled out, but who's to say that the school district won't just find someone else to do the job? Surely someone around would do it just for the publicity now that it's such a big story.
They're children. Surely you want to track them. It's like the big complaints people have about having cameras in schools and people monitoring them. I tell ya, when I went to school we could have done with some of those cameras. Would have put a quick stop to all the anti-social lord-of-the-flies-esq behaviour that characterizes the school years of most kids.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm gonna cut class wear my badge for me.
Easy Hack
They probably figured out that kids are smarter than they are when it comes to technology. I'm sure if I was in a school that used RFID (and 10 years younger) I would be able to do some mischief using that system by cloning other peoples RFIDs, making it seem they were in multiple places at once, or letting people skip school and have dupe RFIDs stay in the library etc. For the majority of students I'm sure things would work as expected, but some of those "troubled teens" or "geeks" would have a wickedly fun time with it.
.. but I'd be disgusted if I had a child that a school wanted to monitor in this way. Is this really the way of the future? Get the kiddly-winks used to the idea of being constantly under watch nice and early? This kind of stuff worries me greatly. Are we going to be looking back at these episodes in five years wondering how we let things get so out of hand so quickly?
...Incom Corp. has announced that it is getting out of the RFID market entirely and will instead start producing starfighters.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Hopefully the school can't find another business to continue this crap. I wonder if any parents tried to keep their kids home from school or if there was some sort of opt-out program.
I, for one, will NOT be welcoming our RFID tagging principal overlords.
Like Omni Consumer Products. OCP never let bad publicity -- or anything else -- stand in the way of implementation of a bad idea.
P.S. Slashdot bad-posting guilt-by-subnet-association sucks.
the company had stated why they pulled out, and stated that it was because they disagreed with the policy of tracking students everwhere, but truth is, they probably don't. That's what this company does. They probably pulled out because of bad publicity and wanting to avoid being named a defendant in a lawsuit. Great, the students aren't being tracked. Problem is, that leaves the door open for the situation to be repeated. Without the clear determent of a court ruling against this, or an open statement against this by the school/company, I can't help but wonder if this is a hollow victory.
www.voiceofthehive.com - Beekeeping and Honeybees for those who don't.
If I were a parent I would not want my child walking around with a RFID tag that could give potential assailants information they could use to manipulate my child. If they actually had the child's name, grade on the tag I am sure someone would figure out how to get it.
LIVE, Love, die
How soon until we're incorporating them into our clothes?
On the other hand though, this system would be rather easy to beat, given that you could ostensibly duplicate your RFID. "How did Jimmy go to the bathroom AND stay in class??". Or just place your tag on someone you know is going to your class and skipping.
Honestly, we need better teachers, not a better way to keep the crappy ones locked in.
I was interviewed a few days ago for my local paper with the hypothetical "what if YOUR school instituted RFID tags?" thrown at me. My reply was that in an age where reliance on technology is reaching a dangerous threshold, it'd be wiser to spend the money and resources on a new administrator or teacher instead of tagging students.
I know, at least at my school, we could stand to drop a few laptop computers in order to hire another body to patrol the halls. Sure, cameras and tags might catch everything but how practical is it when one man is responsible for catching every rule breaker?
O' course, the same article stated that my local school board wouldn't mind implementing the system for "safety and attendance." Where's the ACLU when you need them?
When they try to pull this next time, remember this handy formula:
RFID badge + 3 seconds in a microwave = piece of dead plastic.
But think of the children!!!!
Although in this case it seems the parents are actually thinking the right way... Against the trend of let-the-school-raise-the-child these days.
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
I'd be right with the ones who vow to keep this out of their school. No way, no how, not ever.
Part of growing up is doing things wrong, and getting away with it. If kids couldn't get in a bit of trouble, if they didn't think they could break the rules just a LITTLE, we would have a generation perfectly suited for doing EXACTLY what they are told, by anyone in power.
Thats bad - very bad. Kids have to know they can break some rules and it's ok, and that people in power are not gods. If we all learned that leaving the library 10 minutes early for break is something we can't get away with, (see, word of god) we certainly wouldn't have the balls to tell our employer to F'off when they cut our lunchbreak down to 20 minutes.
Student RFID Tracking Suspended from School with that pun intended, it is a sad day for all pun makers and superintendants alike... (and if your a pun making superintendant, well then your just screwed)
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
Troy is at it again.
Well, InCom Corp., the company that provided the tech free of charge to the school, has abruptly pulled out, without explanation.
Hrm, I wonder if their eventual explanation will involve words like "threats" and "guns".
Anyone have the webpage for Incom, Corp to check out their press releases?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Not only because privacy concerns, but the technology itself. Standards are loosely defined and conflicting, equipment is expensive and not really that accurate. In my workplace, we're kinda being pushed to move in that direction, and after learning more about it, we want to put it off as long as possible. If we're going to be scanning barcodes frequently anyway because RFID is not realiable enough, then it's not worth it.
It's a problem when unproven technology is used to make important decisions, policy, disciplinary or otherwise, just because a bunch of suits, beancounters or bureaucrats think that technology is infalible. Same problem with electronic voting.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
However, some parents are not mollified, and vow to permanently keep such people-tracking technologies out of their schools
Hurrah!
"I'm disappointed; that's about all I can say at this point," Earnie Graham, the superintendent and principal of Brittan Elementary School in Sutter, said Tuesday night. "I think I let my staff down. Nobody on this campus knows every student."
How about starting by getting rid of this clown?
Here are some cool things I think can be done with RFID student tracking.
1) If a student was absent from class, automatically email the student the homework assignments for the day.
2) Log times when students enter and exit bathrooms, and share that data with the smoke alarm. Identify which students are potential druggies or smokers.
3) Add RFID scanners to the broom closets, and give teachers RFID badges too, to identify which teacher/students are performing fellatio
4) Use RFID to keep track of room usages for marketing purposes. For example, school clubs are generally hosted in various class rooms. Identifying popular club could lead to better ideas in fundraising events that students would be interested in.
That`s what it`s all about for all companies, including this one. The only plausible reason they would "pull out abruptly" is that they were informed of not only a possible loss, but a very probable one indeed. How would that happen? They would get sued, and some law that we don`t know about would hit daylight.
So they pulled out so that another company that`s not so bright can think -Hey, there`s an opening in a market, let`s grab it! That way the new company will take the fall, or at least make clear what kind of strategy is needed to reenter the market - without a probable loss of maoney...
So here we have a case in which 2 opposing sides -- the public, and the publicly-funded government school -- are fighting over a technology that a private company has been selling and promoting.
The people paying for the system get pissed off about it. Company responds by having nothing more to do with the situation -- in other words, the company, recognizing the threat to their own future profits, is catering to the demands of the public.
Meanwhile, the government, represented by the school principal, still wants to act against the will of the public which is funding it.
Please, somebody promote socialism to me, and tell me that the government responds better to public demands than businesses do, or heck, even that the govn't has the public's best interests in mind. LOL!
The sad thing is, that because of vested interests (read: public school teacher unions), the parents are going to continue paying for this system they oppose. Welcome to the wonders of socialism and government, generally.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
"The school had already disabled the scanners above classroom doors and was not disciplining students who didn't wear the badges."
:)
Doesnt seem like that would produce much worthwhile info from the test now does it?
The privacy aspect sounds like kind of a non-issue at the moment
I wonder if the implimentation of the RFID tags also came with less people patrolling the halls. Assuming that the kids are wearing the tags and they know when they leave.
I can see it as a cost savings measure over the long run, if that is the case.
Pretty Pictures!
Dirtside got modded Score:-1, Troll.
I say it didn't go far enough, instead of just RFID tags, full GPS should have been used, that way kids could be caught running in the halls, crowding round a toilet (that means someone is getting dunked), cutting in line for lunch and making-out in the bike shed (2 people should NOT be that close together). There would be a display with little dots showing their position at all times. You could even add sensors to this device to make sure its never removed, and a microphone and camera so you can patch in to any kid. Im certain the school would run like clockwork, no-one would be out-of-line, especially after the electric shock modules were installed.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Personally, I don't see a problem with having the kids wear the tags?
If the kids are where they are suppose to be, then the teacher(s) already know where they are, but if the kids aren't where they should be, then this should tell you, and it is the school's business to know where they are.
The kids, while at school, are the school's responsibility.
It's not like these tags are on them to keep track of them 24/7 (which I think would be a good idea for the parents to have when they kids are "living under their roof").
What if one of these little kids went missing? This would allow literal alarm bells to sound in such case. Tracking attendance in classrooms isn't an invasion of privacy (tracking toilet uses is) because a normal register system does exactly the same thing.
I like the idea. However used on older kids and expanded to the entire school ground might be a little bit of an invasion.
I had to do that once, then again it was because my parents walked in.
However, I guess that with RFID this law has to be completed in one way or another. For instance by having the RFID sensors signalled, and their purposes indicated by separate colors.
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
teachers checking attendance?
When I was at school, teachers checked attendance when you went into class. And if you needed to leave the classroom (e.g. to go to the loo or whatever else), you would need to get permission from the teacher. If a kid cuts class and goes down the back behind the shed to smoke or do drugs or something, they would show up as "absent" on both the computer method and the hand checked method. And they would be in just as much trouble if they are caught.
This just replaces a teacher with a hand-checked attendence list with a computer checking the same attendance, how does that make it a problem?
Oh wait, except the people who can't pay for it.
I think this is a Good Thing. Not because kids don't need to be accountable for their whereabouts -- hell, they need more accountability -- but because if something like a tracking device is accepted at a young age, it will become more accepted as they grow into adults.
Next thing you know, they'll be putting GPS on our cars.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Earnie Graham, the superintendent and principal of Brittan Elementary School in Sutter, said Tuesday night. "I think I let my staff down. Nobody on this campus knows every student."
Now we have identified the REAL problem, that they should be looking to a solution for. Or, of course, we could always try and get technology to think for us.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
but Americans need to make up their fucking minds. They don't want to spend gobs of time teaching and socializing their kids, but by God they'll be damned if someone else is gonna do it 'fer dem. What we're left with is millions of kids with no real direction in life. Their parents are too busy (often just getting by) to do much of anything, but the schools are pretty limited in what they can do. Take Japanese schools, where the school takes an active role in socializing children, for instance. If American parents don't want the school's raising their kids that fine, but they need to start doing it themselves, or just stop having them then.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I don't claim to know why the company withdrew, but here's a though:
:-) is guaranteed that all resident students are required to be enrolled in a meal plan. Students aren't happy, but the administration is pleased about the reduced cost to them.
Companies would be more willing to do things free of charge/at a reduced fee if they know that participation is guaranteed. On my campus, our food provider (who also feeds a local hospital
The school in the article would have a tough time guaranteeing that all students could be forced to participate in a tracking system as controversial as it is. And without global participation, the school's potential as a case study is greatly diminished, leaving hardly any financial return on what can only be a substantial investment.
It's been 20 years since I was in a public school, but I seem to remember them keeping a thing called "attendance" in every class, including homeroom, except that it was done with paper and pencil and was prone to error (my report cards NEVER had attendence columns that made sense).
What's wrong with automating it? What "right" is a kid giving up having the school know where he is? As a parent, I LIKE the idea that my kid can be tracked within a school.
Furthermore, as a parent I think that 2/3s of the problem with our schools is that discipline has gone to hell in a handbasket, and the school knowing where the students are is part of discipline. Even in high school these are still kids with poor judgement and little life experience.
I sometimes wonder if all the hullaballoo about this kind of thing isn't the byproduct of a bunch of high school slashdotters all frothy mouthed about their "rights" (which they largely don't have, except in their imaginations).
This will definetly stop a lot of the shennanigans these kids pull. A couple of pops accross the arse never hurt anyone.
Just do it.
And in article, they wrote it beamed the updated attendance record to a teacher's handheld. A slick piece of work, that, & hard to make robust (I have some experience in this area). My intuition has always been that evil people are bad programmers. Something about how their twisted brains can never exude straightforward code....
I bet they never got it working. The article implies they hardly used it before shutting it off.
Is the principle's name Ed Rooney? Cause I hear he IS a pedophile!
If you're dumb enough to get killed by a drunk driver, then it's one less idiot to reproduce later.
Let's see, go to the bathroom or other place where your presence won't be noticed, wrap the badge in aluminum foil, leave the campus to do what you wish. Return, go to the bathroom, remove the foil and resume your day.
Do the same but attend class.
Steal someone's badge, hid it in the bathroom, later on put it in the owners back pack.
And so on...
When confronted "know nothing". The system must be unreliable so the administrtation and parents can't trust it.
Nate
"Technology scares some people it's a fear of the unknown," parent Mary Brower told the newspaper before the meeting. "Any kind of new technology has the potential for misuse, but I feel confident the school is not going to misuse it."
There is no unknown here -- we know exactly what's going on. Get the kids used to being "tagged" -- so that everyone with access knows exactly where they are at all times. Once everyone is used to this kind of Big Brother handling, its easy enough to extend it into "the real world".
2 movies in recent memory depicted this "track every step" mentality as the normal operation of society are:
Minority Report -- in that movie, it has eyeball scanners at every corner, recording who is going where and when. The eyeball scanners were a little overkill -- all they needed were RFID tags.
and
Imposter -- in that movie, the RFID (which was much too large compared with what is available today) was implanted in everyone's back. Tracking stations were everywhere.
If you get into trouble, or if someone wants to know where you are, all they have to do is look you up.
If we don't put into place some very strong laws against this kind of Big Brother attitude, we'll forever be fighting people who try and try again to implement this kind of technology.
I'm sorry, but if people think "it won't happen in this country!", they are wrong. All the government has to do is allow something bad to happen, and in the name of "security", implement these tags. As the opening credits rolled in Imposter, you hear Gary Sinise talking about the beginning of a war with some Alien civilization that was apparently trying to take over the Earth (I'm paraphrasing here):
"Democracy, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Civil Liberties... all gone in the blink of an eye after the first attack."
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
Actually, the courts have repetitively not seen it that way. The constitutionality has been tested on this issue, actually. Why?
You can't be trusted.
Wait! Hear me out!
Educators, along with parents and administrators are responsible for your well-being. You are not. You're still growing up; learning what it means to be human. Presumably, you don't have it all figured out, and may not be competent to do so. To help you along, there are limits on what you can do, as well as restrictions on your freedom to ensure that you're not doing anything you shouldn't be doing. Of course, basic human rights as defined in the constitution are still given to you.
When you grow up, you will be held fully accountable for your own actions, and the alienable rights previously protected by your parents on your behalf will be bestowed upon you.
School administrators are legally allowed to search your person, your locker, and any bags you may be carrying in order to ensure that you and your fellow students are safe. Further, they are allowed, forcably or otherwise, to confine you to particular locations (i.e. classrooms) while school is in session to ensure that you are being productive. They can hunt you down and bring you back to school, too. It is for this previous reason that they need to know where you are. Don't build a straw-man argument of it - not for ever second of every day - only while school is in session. It's their job.
Now as far as being just as much of a citizen...I don't know. Most citizens in good standing with society contribute to it or have done so in the past. Minors are generally not a part of that because they aren't ready or competent to do so.
Maybe you think that you are. There has to be some cutoff point, doesn't there? The Bill of Rights supposedly applies to all full citizens in good standing. If there isn't a cutoff point, then a four year old is a full citizen, and therefore entitled to the right to bear arms. That, to me, is a problem. I'm not even sure how many 18 year olds I'd trust with a gun, and I was one not too long ago.
I submit to you that a minor is less of a citizen in the legal, operation sense of the word. You may mean it some other way, but since we're talking about laws of citizenry, this is the definition that applies here.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
The same parents that'll go crazy and start filing lawsuits against the school system when their little kid goes somewhere without telling them?
Yea, im pretty sure. Do the parents have a reason against it? No. Do 10 year old kids have a super sense of privacy? No. Would it benefit them and their parents? Absolutely! Do they feel the RFID tags will poison their children? Probably.
I'd fake it. I'd take to examining my badge very carefully, get a good idea of how they look. Then I'd get a nice photo or scan or copy of it, whatever. I'd then take it and duplicate it on a computer. We are talking a school here so I find the likelyhood that they use any serious technology like holograpihcs about nil. I'm betting a couple hours with InDesign or Quark and I'd have a nice template. So then stop at a copyshop when it's convenient and get a nice high quality reproduction. Mount it in the correct holder, you are golden.
Doing that, I'd have basically an iron clad way of ditching class. I'd come to school wearing the fake, with the real one in my bag, or if they issued them at the door, put on the real one and swap it for the fake later. When I want to leave, hand the real one to a friend in the same class, and take off. Come back, get the badge back.
Anyone who sees me walking around will think nothing is amiss, after all the locator badge is on so I must be doing what I'm supposed to. I get automatically signed in to class, and it's all good. Even if the teacher claims I wasn't there, I can appeal to the Great God of Technology(tm). I mean, I always have my badge on, and it says I was there, so clearly I was right? However for larger classes, I doubt it would even register with the teacher that I was absent unless it was habitual.
Now some may point out that it's unlikely I could duplicate the badge precisely. True, but not relivant. All it needs to be is close enought that it looks correct on a glance. Other than actual secure locations, people don't crefully start at badges, they at most glance at them to see that they are there. So long as the elements are in the correct place and it looks basically correct, it won't get questioned.
Seems stupid to me. When real attendence is taken, the teacher actually looks around and manually verifies student presence. Very hard to fake that, I can't really build a replica of myself. However if it's all automated, the teacher just never checks, and espically if you are one of the quiet types, it isn't likely to conciously register with them. Students are absent all the time, so a specific absense isn't likely to mentally register, espically if they aren't expected to check on it.
I see this as a wonderful way to help students cut class and not get caught.
*hummm* girl approaching.
*BZZ BZZ BZZZ!* She watches the same TV shows that you!
*TWEE TWEE TWEE* She's a slashdot reader!!!!
We don't need no education.
We don't need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom.
Teachers, leave those kids alone.
Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
I may just be another brick in the wall, but the wall I'm in faces west, I'm at the top, and when the sun goes down, I'm one of the last sob's to see it...don't tag school kids!
At first tracking people in anyway seems bad - on a second thought though, their children & keeping track of them is something the adults responsible for them should be doing, hell imbed gps trackers in the bastards so if they get abducted/break a leg playing in a ditch etc you can find the little bastards. Of course that also leads to the fact that the government will probably be able to track them too, which is not a good thing to me.
Of course, that dosn't address the fact that in this case they were using the RFID tags to "inventory" the children for attendance etc, rather than keep track of where they are, which really shows that the school just dosn't want to own up to doing the leg work of knowing where the kids are (in my opinion, a grade school teacher should be able to look at their class and know who's their/missing if not the class is too big {not really the teachers fault}).
I hardly see how keeping track of "inventory" should be applied to children, but I don't see a responsible party tracking where they are while their under their watch is bad, except for the damn black helicoptors that will use it as well.
Forcing the students to wear the badges isn't an issue. The real problem would be a student hiding a badge somewhere deep in their book bag and registering an absent student as present.
I'm sure the faculty was smart enough to recognize this problem, thus they would have been performing manual attendance to audit the system. Plus every time a student forgot their ID, or a part of the system failed, or there's a power outage, they would have to resort back to the manual system.
IMO the heart of the problem is misapplying technology. Is taking attendance really such a time-consuming, difficult task to perform to require tens of thousands of dollars of equipment and the dispersal of hardware to every single student? A teacher should recognize their students, and should be cognizant of empty seats that are normally occupied.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I would not be the person I am happy to be today if I'd not been able to buck the system and grow and learn as I saw fit. This included thinking adults and their education system and agenda-driven curriculum was for the birds. It also included thumbing my nose at the rule system, skipping hundreds of hours worth of classes, causing some minor property damage, telling the teachers what I thought of the system and why I thought it, and then going on to be successful and happy in life. This drove most of the teachers and controllers completely nuts, as was deserved. --Teachers, minus those note-worthy exceptions, are among the most clued-out people on the planet. Born in insulated, middle-income suburban families, growing up through twenty years of school and then given teaching positions directly from graduation. . . Basically, these are people who never left Starfleet and often have the most warped view on how reality works. It becomes the kid's responsibility to discern the lies from the reality they must inhabit after leaving the halls of indoctrination, and most fail miserably because it is a natural inclination from birth to listen to and trust their elders, which in this case is a giant mistake.
If my school had tried to collar me with an RFID tag when I was in my teens, and feed me some bullshit about how it was right and proper for them to do so. . . Well, it would have been a call for me to mess with their system as badly as possible, up to and including getting expelled. Or shot.
Kids are not packages, and they are not inherently stupid. They come into life, each with a personal plan and mission; they know what this mission is by following the direction indicated by their inspiration and passions. Oppressive control systems, drugs, shitty food, mind-fogging EM devices, television. . , all of that crap is designed to knock people off their paths and keep humanity in a ditch. Often, I think the anger and frustration kids feel is a direct response to the amount of adult stupidity in the world and the lack of real society. I know, had I been given role models worthy of respect and a good system to work and learn within, I wouldn't have been a 'problem' kid for the administration.
Anyway, I suspect you must be trolling, but in case you are not, this is my honest reaction to your post.
-FL
Some of the feedback is interesting as well. Basically, the 'solution' doesn't solve any problems, and it's money that could be better spent on teachers and books. Yes, I know, this one was 'free', but it won't always be free.
g erprinting_1.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/01/fin
i wish this sort of thing happened when i was a truent(cough).. im mean student. Our teachers generally called your name during role call and looked at you when you answered. If only we could have given our tags to someone who wanted to turn up or deposited it unknowingly in to that persons bag, truency would have been much easier and teachers who had lost control or responsibility could just pass the buck onto the flawed system.
serenity now!
What user name am I, then?
As a parent I understand being upset reading the AP report that says my kid gets the same tech as my beef. The point everyone misses is this technology is already here and widely deployed in business and government. Ever wave your ID badge to get through the door? As the price keeps coming down on RFID/contactless smart cards it will trickle into schools. That can actually be a good thing if we get off /. and actually help schools write good policies on how this stuff should be deployed.
There are school districts, even in the wealthiest of states, where there aren't enough *chairs* for the students. And yet great sums of money are being spent on this technology because teachers in another district are too lazy to use a pen and paper to take attendance.
Can everyone get one meal before other get seconds, please?
---
www.socialistalternative.org
As an adult, the penalties for thumbing one's nose at the matrix can include all manner of very bad things.
I read an interesting story about the kids during Hitler's Germany. --After the Nazi Youth had grown up a bit, the kids coming up after them rejected the propaganda and became a huge problem for the government. --And not in the nice Judy Blume way. There were actually public executions of some of the kids who were seen as being leaders among the youth, which of course, did nothing but inflame things. Only a teen-ager can be over-dramatic and passionate and driven in such ways. Nobody ever hears about this side of the war within Germany at that time, and it was a huge, huge factor, eventually doing more to mess things up from the inside than Allied bombing from without.
This gives me a ray of hope for the future of America. --Though, through MTV and cell-phones and junk-food, etc., the controllers are doing everything in their power to pre-emptively nip that bud before it ever grows. But I have faith in chaos. The good guys don't always win, but in a pinch a bit of tin-foil in the washroom can go a long way.
I don't even find it ironic that the Tin Foil Hatters will be the ones to carry hope forward. Just predictable. The non-conformists who look and think and concern themselves with unpleasant possibilities rather than run blind with the herd. . , they will be the ones who will also be able to see and jump out of the way while everybody else walks blind into the slaughterhouse. .
-FL
invasive government.
Because anarchy is so much worse than a nanny/police state THAT YOU CANNOT HIDE FROM.
The only thing that scares me more than the thought of an all-encompassing nanny state is the number of people who are willing to bend over and accept it. Perhaps it's because this generation has been conditioned into not caring about essential civil liberties, and to trust the government (i.e. The Man or any authority figure). RFID-tagging children is merely the next step. This is the Hitler Jungvolk on an even-greater scale.
Tracking our kids is just a precursor to tracking every member of society.
The safety of children really isn't the issue here. In the short term it's about contracts for RFID companies and kickbacks for school officials, and long term it's about leaving the impression on children to accept blatant abuse of their basic, vital, yet sacred and fragile right to privacy, and the basic legal notion of presumption of innocence.
If it was, about student safety, how about teachers start trusting the students and they might reciprocate. Give students a reason to be at school, other than "because it's the law". Lead by example. Otherwise you'll get the prison warden - prisoner relationship that exists at the moment in many schools (it's happening at my high school).
If I were a parent I would not want my child walking around with a RFID tag that could give potential assailants information they could use to manipulate my child. If they actually had the child's name, grade on the tag I am sure someone would figure out how to get it.
Nevermind the fact that most kids who are molested are molested by someone they know, like an unkle, grandfather, teacher, coach, or someone else who already knows their name, age, who their parents are, et cetera.
Anyway, this is silly since RFID's are just like a serial number. You need access to the school's database to see what serial number corresponds to which student.
My other first post is car post.
Define 'benefit'.
Why do the ignorant always post anonymously on this kind of subject? --And come to think of it, why so often with crappy language skills and in this case, dumb HTML usage? Is there a link between ignorance in how to communicate and ignorance in how the education system works? Hmm. . . Is ignorance a general, cross-discipline malaise which contaminates the afflicted on more than one level, I wonder?
It's just a thought. .
-FL
FUCK THAT. (I'm totally serious.)
No kid of mine will ever wear a tracking tag at school.
If the school needs to solve accountability problems with electronic tags, then that school has problems that run a lot deeper than a few problem kids.
We have time honored methods of running schools that, when allowed to work properly, keep the schools running just fine with no technology necessary at all.
The problem we have today is threefold:
1. The lawyers have hampered the schools
2. Lots of parents either
- don't have time to give a fuck
- simply don't give a fuck
- are not aware they even have the option of giving a fuck.
3. Standardized tests and other high stakes "reform" programs inhibit the instructors ability to actually teach the kids something worth going to class for. (again, dead serious on this point.)
Fix those things and the need for these insulting tags will go away on it's own.
Blogging because I can...
the Gov't is, and our Gov't has long since grown past the quaint notion of spending the people's money. Once they have it, it's thiers, not yours.
What's at stake here is money anyway: the money the Feds pay out for per student attendence. The Principal is looking at this and thinking about how much more money he'd have if he had 99% attendence and 100% student accountablity. With more and more brats being born to people with no intrest in parenting, and more and more of them skipping school, Principals all over are desperate for those federal bucks. The parents are not paying for the system, it's paying for itself. And hell, it's pay for itself again when those same brats maybe learn to read for a change.
Sociallism works fine, properly applied. For starters, lets have Gov't mandated sterialization for the dumb and lazy. The problem with capitalists is they love to ignore the root problems and treat the symptoms instead, mostly 'cause it's more profitable that way.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Save some money and just tattoo a serial number on each kid's forearm.
Back in 1993 (?) I went to a conference at Boston University. Two technolgies caught my interest. One was a way to use the color of your eyes, or rather the pattern that is visible externally, for identification purposes. They claimed it was as accurate as fingerprints, but only required a picture of the persons eye. The second was a system for reading license plate numbers. They had a small camera with a log-polar lense; the lense was small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. The entire unit with camera sensors and computer hardware fit on a radio-controled truck. It recorded circular pictures instead of rectangles. It provided very fine high resolution in the center of the view, and very low resolution at the outer edges of the circle. It was very good for identifying the general shape of a car at the peripheral to guide the camera to the license plate, then read off the digits with good accuracy.
Adapted to work together, this could be a very convenient, pasive method for identifying anyone passing by the camera. Just put it in one of those black balls on the ceiling. Maybe add a red flashing light, or put it next to a clock, so that people will glance at it. Of course, it's only relative identification (same eyes as before, but who's eyes?), until you use a credit card or get a photo-id and that's shared with other databases.
Considering it's been over 10 years, I'm certain that the knowledge for how to do this is readilly available. It's just a matter of motivation for why anyone would want to develop such a system and deploy it.
How would you even know if it were being done today? Besides, what could you even do about it? It's just another video survalance camera.
You know it's really really weird that you would choose the term "nanny state" to say why we shouldn't put kids under greater technologically assisted supervision. That's what a nanny does, supervise children. It doesn't make sense to put adults under such supervision, because we are not children. But, and try to follow me here, it does make sense to put children under such supervision as the actual definition of the word "nanny" suggests!
How we know is more important than what we know.
Perhaps you also don't realize that school districts are legally responsible for each and every child from the time they get to school until the time they are sent or taken home. The minors are essentially in the custody of the school district for the duration of the day. If I was responsible for hundreds or thousands of minors and I answered to their parents I would certainly want to do everything in my power to ensure that they are where they're supposed to be and not our fucking around off-campus.
I was a student at one point and time too. If my district had implemented this type of tracking policy when I was a student I would have hated it too. I would have fought it tooth and toenail. I'm not a child anymore, though. Hindsight really is 20/20. Being tracked and being kept more on the straight and narrow would have probably been a good thing for me and my classmates. We got away with a lot; too much. Someone could have seriously been hurt, or worse. In retrospect I would have welcomed the tracking when I was a minor. I think every single door should be monitored and logged. No one should get in or out without a log entry being made. I'm not so sure about bathrooms but I'm sure that the school administration have their reasons. I think every classroom door should also be monitored and logged. I think the students shouldn't be the only occupants of the structure to be tracked. I believe all faculty and staff should be monitored as well, that includes teaching staff, administrative staff, and facilities staff. No one should be without tracking. I also include on my list any and all visitors. This would be a major boon for school districts. One could prove after an accusation that no the janitor didn't break into bitchy student ABC's locker and steal her CD player. That janitor was on the other side of the building cleaning in the kitchen. Accusations like that happen all too often. A tracking system like this could greatly help put an end to problems such as these.
That's my $0.02. I don't see it as a bad thing at all. I think the many major benefits more than outweigh the lack of negatives I haven't been able to think of. It's something that should happen IMHO.
When I was younger, we were required to wear uniforms with badges stating our name, class, and school. It was never considered a problem. So I fail to see what the fuss is about.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Teaching kids that it's okay to track them like cattle (really like cattle in this case, using the very same technology as is used to track cattle and merchandise) will cause them to tend to be docile and care little for their freedom.
Coming as this does at about the same time as that survey showing that kids don't care about or know much about the first amendment, this is somewhat worrisome.
I sincerely hope that this is an isolated occurrence that won't be repeated.
Eh?
I would pull my kids out of the school. Ignoring the more philosophical concerns, from a purely pragmatic standpoint if you start treating kids like criminals and prisoners, they'll start acting like them.
Seriously.
Children (like most people) will live down to your expectations. I, for one, treat my children with respect and as respectible people, and they respond to that.
Ditto for in-school cameras and other oppressive tech toys.
Accidentally microwave it. Then refuse to pay for a new one, because it cannot be helped that they are crappy and break. When new one is made, repeat. Second solution: religious reasons for why your child cant wear an id. Third: get a brain and get them outlawed. Come up with some case where they can be hacked and used by pedophiles or something.
Distopia averted.
2*31*37*263
...graduated from HS in 2000.
When I was a senior, a tech company 'volunteered' to install a fingerprinting system for checking out books - the idea is that you have the librarian scan every book, you swipe your fingerprint in the reader, and you're off. It replaced good ol' barcode on the back of our (photo) student IDs (which we were supposed to carry always).
I happened to be in the library during the time that the system was launched, the suits there and all. I walked by, wanting to check a book out and they asked me whether I wanted to test drive this awesome new fingerprinting technology, and I said no to their face (the look was priceless). I graduated soon after and didn't look back, but I found out that all the fingerprints, in BMP form, were stored on an unpatched, networked windows PC in the library. (Oh, the fun I could have had; I could have delivered the fingerprints to the principal Veronica-Mars-style [flippantly] and gotten away with it too)
I don't have a problem with submitting my fingerprint as part of the moral character application to the bar, but for checking out a frigging research book at school?
Anyway, I also heard that they got rid of that later, because kids didn't want to use it. I'm all for phasing out shitty security-dangerous technology de facto.
While destroying individual chips is an okay temporary solution, the better solution is to change the system that deems it okay to use the items in the first place.
This situation reflects on what the public school system has become.
Full disclosure: I am a public school teacher/computer tech. I started out as a computer technician and when I got my BA was assigned to be a typing/computer teacher. It's a long story but basically in my state, anyone with a BA is qualified to be a teacher. My district has a policy that says any employee can be reasigned to any job that he or she is qualified for any reason. My choice was to take the teaching job plus the computer tech job or no job.
I am in a unique situation because I see education at all levels on a daily basis. I teach at a high school but work on computers at elementary, middle, and high schools. When I was in school it seemed like all the teachers/administrators in the school knew who I was by name. I can't say the same today. I only know the students who I have had in class. The main reason I see for this is the size of schools. When I was in high school there was a total of 500 students. This was in the same district in which I now teach. Back then there were three high schools in my city. Today there is only one high school with over 2000 students.
My point here is that we have created the need for a system like this. It is easy for a student to just fall between the cracks. Last semester I had a class of 40 students. It is difficult to look at the class and determine who is missing.
Last year was the first year students were required to wear ID badges. Teachers and staff have always been required to wear ID badges. These badges don't employ RFID but there was some discussion over the value of such a system. Those opposed to the badges cited privacy concerns. They did not want people to know their name. Those for the badges cited security concerns. The paranoia after 9/11 caused the badges to be approved.
Some students refused to wear the badges in protest while others simply forgot to wear them. The punishment for not having and displaying your ID was a 30 minute detention for each day the badge was not shown. Some teachers enforced the policy while others ignored it. I simply asked my students to have the ID on their person. After one of my students got in trouble in another class for not displaying their ID I got in trouble for telling my students to just have their ID available. I asked the principal why the students needed to display the ID while in class. That does not make any sense. I have no problem with the ID being displayed while entering the building or in the halls. That makes sense. (Common sense in public school is lacking. That is an entirely different subject I could and should write my Master's Thesis on.)
In one year the numbers of detentions increased by 400%. The district had to hire two people dedicated to processing and ensuring that detentions were being served. That's my tax dollars at work. This year the school board changed the policy to only require the students to have the ID on their person. The students also needed to show the ID when entering the building. When a teacher or staff member asks a student to see their ID they must produce it or face punishment as deemed by the teacher. The punishment can not exceed 30 minutes of detention.
So basically after my experience I would not suggest the use of ID cards.
School is an aristocracy anyhow, or at least a very long way from democracy. School also does a lot of other things to kids that we wouldn't even think of doing to adults. After all, school doesn't necessarily get kids used to having all their internet access filtered rediculously by their government, or being forced by their government to do math for an hour a day, study history for another hour...
What worries me is that the RFID tags will be implemented on a global scale, and that they will be as insecure as credit cards, and that I will be convicted of a crime I didn't commit, based on RFID "evidence". Look at what happened to SpeedPass, for instance.
But in school? In my experience, every part of school is meant to be ridiculously anal because it's also meant to be broken easily. Example: NT admin who doesn't know about \\fileserver\\C$ and accidently types his domain-wide admin password into the username field.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
http://www.incomcorporation.com/
From the looks of their website, they certainly didn't pull out of the project to focus on their core business...
Not only does InCom specialize in RFID public-school attendance systems, that's the only thing they do! Let me see if I can't come up with an explanation for their behavior:
At this point, the company's chances of survival are slim, and there's a strong probability that the executives will fold and cut their losses. This installation in CA was their one big chance to make a splash, and it was a total disaster. I doubt this company has the resources to try again.
However you look at it. I think RFID in the schools is gone for the time being. If it returns, the company bringing it about will undoubtedly learn from the mistakes made here. The parents will be involved in the decision, and extra care will be taken to make sure that it turns out to be a PR success.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
If that's the Ray Stanz (Dan Akroyd) quote from Ghostbusters, you got it wrong.
"You've never been out of college, you don't know what it's like out there. I've worked in the private sector... they expect results"
HTH
Piece of dead plastic doesn't count you in automated attendence? Cops knocking on parents' door? Just speculation...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Start with G.W. bush and his pals
and out the windows? The system will say they are still in the classroom.
You ask a lot of hypotheticals. Do you really see these tags as being the best (most practical, most efficient, whatever critera you like) solution for each of those problems?
These are children. They are impressionable. They know barely more than nothing. They soak up everything they're taught as the truth, and they hold on to those thoughts like a religion. They aren't complex enough to realize the world isn't black and white. It's even worse when parents don't get involved, and a lot don't.
If you teach them it's okay for the government to track them, they'll believe you. If you teach them they have no hope against authority, they'll believe you. If you teach them safety is more important than privacy, they'll believe you. If you teach them safety is more important than freedom, they will believe you.
My child will never learn these lessons. No child will ever learn these lessons with my tax dollars.
I don't want to live in a world 12 years from now where these kids make up the bulk of our military, have the ability to vote, and believe it's okay for the government to track them for any reason, even safety.
I don't have much trust in the public school system as it is, and I admit that I am biased against them, but this would have been more than enough for me to remove my kids from the school and to seek alternatives.
Now, however, I do know what the principal would say, and what my wife would say: "This is good because no one could take our kids without us knowing who did it and when. Also, this could prevent another Columbine."
I think that both of those reasons are bunk, and I refuse to give creedence to them, but I do know that many parents believe them. It's a sad sad world we're living in.
Many times I'm inclined to believe that if I instill in my children a love of freedom, liberty, and a hackish spirit, they will either rule the Earth, or be burned at the stake as heretics.
Mark my words. In two years, this will be back, and people will be less resistant. Five years after that, it will become a nationally mandatory perogative.
Personal security erodes over time. Always. Period.
Get used to it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
thanks, but that's too long for a slashdot sig ...
And yet, somehow, hundreds of millions of people survived their lives without worry-warts nervously watching over their every move. Heck, I and all my grade managed -somehow- to get through our entire engagement with the educational system without once being abducted or rolled in a bus or lost in a lake. The accidents I remember during those ten years in my community which served about 1500 kids were the following. .
Three deaths over the years from kids crossing a four lane main street while not using the crosswalk.
One death from suicide.
Two eye injuries, one in a food fight, another from slipping on a mopped floor and falling down a set of stairs.
One severe burn victim from a guy who climbed into a neighborhood power transformer while stoned and poking his fingers where he shouldn't have.
And THAT'S IT.
You have fallen prey to the Fear Mongers who want to sell you anti-theft devices and missile defense shields.
If your kid is going to die, it'll be for a good reason which you can't and probably shouldn't be able to foresee or prevent. So do the best you can as a parent, don't over-protect and generally chill out.
Bar-coding your kid isn't going to make him or her stronger in life. It'll just turn out a messed up loser who will have a hard time dealing with the real world. Skipping class kept me sane. The amount of bullshit being shoveled in class by the administration was obvious to me as a teen. I consider myself very lucky to have seen through the lie; the other kids who did as they were instructed have nearly all gone on to live very crappy lives of general servitude. Anybody who takes school as it is meant to be taken is putting themselves at a serious disadvantage; the main thing school was good for was teaching social lessons and providing a BIG TEST. --Getting out of school with your brain in one piece was like trying to escape from one of those lost-memory, Holodeck-illusion, time-loop episodes of Star Trek. Only heros manage such things. Red Shirts always die because they join the army and do as they are told by ass-hat ego-maniacal captains.
You say you got away with too much when you were a kid? --That you would have benefitted from being jammed a little harder into that round hole? I doubt it. You learned from those un-supervised events; social lessons which pushed your limits in real-life scenarios and made you who you are today. Without them, you would have been tested against Life to a much lesser degree, and what would that have taught you, do you think? More sit-at-your-desk-and-do-as-you-are-told skills? How to respect your superiors better?
Winning Freedom from Slave-School is to Fail by their standards.
-FL
Seriously, this use of technology offends me more than I have words for.
Sure, the language of my post was lowbrow, but my point is valid; namely,
this is a technology solution that addresses a symptom, not a cure.
All things considered, we don't need this kind of thing in our schools provided they are running correctly.
Say what you want, but the 3 issues detailed in my parent post have contributed to the growing need for these kinds of control.
I'm shocked honestly. It's my first flamebait since I registered here.
Who wants these tags on their kids and why?
No argument, I just want to know.
Blogging because I can...
Answer: Could not have turned out better. Could, in fact have turned out worse.
The original article states "..a man walked into a classroom, and tried to grab a girl sitting close to the door. The girl screamed, and school employees chased the man out of the building. "
Instead of employees being near the girl, close to the door, suppose they had been in the office, monitoring the sensors?
is the best route to go to track children. The RFID ID card system is just too easy to circumvent - like one child holding several cards while his/her chums cut classes. This is done with family pets, and with race horses, so why not do the same with children?
Also, this would make it far easier to determine which juvenile delinquents have been "tagging" highway signs in the middle of the night, or boosting an auto for a joy ride. I like it!
Octopus cards in Hong Kong are not only used for Mass Transit ticketing but also used to take attendance at schools.
See their site here and check out the product designed for schools. Google here for more on their site.
Octopus cards each have a unique number so they can be used for security control like any electronic key. I've needed to use it to access high rise office buildings in Hong Kong... followed by another RFID card to enter the actual office.
Octopus is aptly named - it's everywhere in Hong Kong... you get used to it so you miss it when you go somewhere else and have to fumble for change on the train or have to sign in to enter a building.
The college I was at five years ago used RFID-based ID cards. They weren't used for attendance because I was attending an evening class where attendance was optional anyway, but they did track entering and leaving the college grounds as well as entry into "sensitive" areas like the computer labs and presumably other places where there was expensive equipment. My sister did a course at the same college a couple of years back and told me that they'd extended the scheme to cover most sections of the college more granularly.
I didn't really care at the time. They knew the class was on and I was likely to be there anyway, so I don't mind them having it on record that I was (or, indeed, wasn't). Using it to track attendance is just silly, for the reasons you describe in your post; I don't really see the privacy problem in the school itself.
This only really becomes an issue if shops that are aimed at school-age kids start reading RFIDs on entry and thus have a unique identifier for each student because they are forced to carry their RFID tags around with them at all times. A similar concern exists with the new RFID-based train cards in London, England: shops around stations could track repeat customers who have the cards. I think the exploitation of this is some way off, though.
The realized the RFID tags would eventually take the place of middle-manager's jobs, then the teacher's jobs, then the principal's job. Then they'd wind up stuck working at McDonald's with RFID tags of their own.
Wish I had mod points. I'm really getting sick and tired of this, mjedia fed, perception that all paedophiles are predatory loners hanging around in parks and children's play areas when they're not surfing the net downloading child porn or grooming kids in chatrooms. Most of them are parents or people who work with children. Probably the biggest child abuse case in recent years in the UK was Ian Huntley, a school caretaker (Janitor) at the school the children he killed attended, who lived with his girlfriend (I think she also worked at the school) and was well known for being really good with children to the extent that parents had no qualms about their children visiting him in his home. As I recall there was no mention of him even owning a PC let alone downloading child porn or frequenting chat rooms.
MOD PARENT UP
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
Don't want your child tracked? Simple solution. Put the card in the microwave for a few seconds.
The regulations don't say anything about the card having to be functional, just that the student has to wear it. Sure, it means that the student will show up as absent and draw attention, but that's easily solved. Just have the teacher take MANUAL attendance. The card is the property of the school district. If taking the card home results in damage due to "localized phenomena beyond the control of the student", then the child can leave it at school.
The school can complain that the card was damaged, but the burden of proving the damage was intentional would be upon the school.
*sigh* I can see that my choice to *not* have children has been a wise one. If I were a parent in today's society, *I* would be the one going Columbine on those responsible for all the beauracracy and bullfeathers.
Oh my god this is just what I need! Wonder how I could get my girlfriend to wear it without noticing!! ok all joking aside... Personally I'm not a huge fan of these tracking devices however it can be really useful. That the place I work you have to enter in passcodes to enter into different areas of the building. If I really need to find someone and if it so happens they might be in an area that cell phones and pagers aren't allowed I can track them down using this system. Ok tracking how long a student is sitting on the throne is alittle much but I could see this being useful in just even tracking all the enteries. This way at least you know a student is within your building. While this seams little crazy to me for highschool students what about elementry school kids. If I was a parent I'd feel alittle saver knowing that if my kid asked to use the bathroom and then walked out the front door a little alarm would go off in the head office. But seriously where can I get one for my girlfriend!
CNN reported this morning that the trial was terminated after many of the badges were found to have been deliberately damaged.
Sounds like someone figured out the microwave trick and the word got around...
Maybe he should listen to the parents -- they're his customers. And not satisfying them could cost him his job.
Chip H.
Not that the compny pulled out, but that elementary school students had to walk around with photo IDs complete with this system to begin with. When I was a kid, such a thing was unheard of, and I never once had to carry a student ID, hell, not even in high school.
:\
Times have certainly changed
Part of the mandate for schools is to prepare children for their future lives. This can be done well or badly.
Schools will (can?) only prepare students for their vision of the future. By doing this, they influence the future in subtle ways. Any actions which are common across the school system will affect the future of the country they are in.
On one hand you could argue that by missing key areas of our education, policy makers are restricting our options. Some neglected education is so crucial that private sector industries have been created (sometimes artificially, by legislation) to replace it - an example being driving. Some missing education merely hampers people in their daily lives, like typing or money management.
Some influence is more subtle. I would argue that the increased time that we spend as dependants in education has made increased state control more policatally acceptable.
This doesn't come close to covering the ways in which our education enriches or limits our lives.
As an example, an argument I commonly have with teacher friends is the presence of specific commercial products on the curriculam - for example, students are taught how to use MS Windows and Word, but NOT operating systems or word processing. When they leave school, they have an ingrained belief that a computer requires ms windows, and even ms office. Because we are in the strange state of softaware development, this is seen as acceptable, despite been seen as ridiculous in more advanced technology - imagine being eductated in such a way you were unable to use more than one brand of pen, paper, book, map, ruler, screwdriver, oven or other tool?
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
Screw the RFID, when can we start putting subdural GPS locators in our infants? If we are gonna go "Big Brother" then let us at least do it right!!!
"Sheep just follow the easiest path and run from scary noises and intimidating creatures." - Me
The system was ostensibly used to automate attendance-keeping.
Flawless!
"Hey, Stevie, could you put this in your backpack for me? Me and the girls gonna go have a smoke."
-- Just another unsolicited opinion... from the Peanut Gallery.
This is not possible for most humans. I certainly could not manage it. But I'd be interested to hear your solutions. There were high schools in my hometown that had over 2000 students.
How many people do you know at all, let alone whether or not they belong roaming the hallways?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
What is the advantage to all this beaming? What problem does this technology solve?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I think this is just an example of the school being lazy. It's also one of those "fashionable feel good" measures that doesn't really add any security or protection for the students. That's just the lame argument the school uses to defend the measure.
Given that there has been a few violent episodes at various schools in the last several years, I can understand the desire for security. I've got young kids myself. But they need to make sure that the measures that are enacted really add security. I would much rather see the schools add metal detectors or search school bags rather than have everyone wear RFID chips. I know that sounds totalitarian, and if I were a student at the school I would hate it too. But at least these are real measures and not fashionable nonsense.
I actually had a friend in middle school enrolled in LD and gifted programs simultaneously. It was pretty funny. Chuck couldn't spell to save his life, but his reading comprehension and speed were top of the charts.
Similar problem in math, but he was really good at logic puzzles. Just wired different, I suppose.
Ended up joining the Marine Corps, being a Hummer mechanic.
Just to point out that LD and gifted aren't quite as mutually exclusive as it would seem.
One on-topic point: I could see using this system to detect unauthorized visitors, if there was a sensor at the same RFID checkpoints to catch motion. If there is motion without RFID signature, sound the alarm and take pictures. Takes care of the aluminum foil wrap-job as well as creepy people walking in to school buildings. But really, this is a lot of bother just for that one, potential, benefit.
I wonder what the parents of kidnapped, raped & murdered children have to say about the issue. If a tracking device let to the recovery of your child, would you feel differently about them?
The fact is, there are some immeasurably sick people out there who look at kids as their personal toys. I'm not saying that tracking devices are the best solution (that would be parents & teachers who care) but if it saves just one kids life, isn't it worth trying?
You seem to choose to make Foes on a whim based on the person who replied to your post (I'm already on your list but haven't posted a reply to you in what might be a year or more; if he was already a foe of yours then maybe I spoke to soon and please accept my apologies).
/. but none of them, including you (possible big hint to my idendity), has made me so angry and given such affront my sense of morals or values that I felt the need to basically in in slashspeak: I hate you.
:)
I find myself disagreeing with plenty of people on
Of course, there is always tomorrow
.