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To Curb Truancy, Dallas Tries Electronic Monitoring
The New York Times is reporting that a school district in Texas is trying a new angle in combating truancy. Instead of punishing students with detention they are tagging them with electronic monitoring devices. "But the future of the Dallas program is uncertain. Mr. Pottinger's company, the Center for Criminal Justice Solutions, is seeking $365,000 from the county to expand the program beyond Bryan Adams. But the effort has met with political opposition after a state senator complained that ankle cuffs used in an earlier version were reminiscent of slave chains. Dave Leis, a spokesman for NovaTracker, which makes the system used in Dallas, said electronic monitoring did not have to be punitive. 'You can paint this thing as either Big Brother, or this is a device that connects you to a buddy who wants to keep you safe and help you graduate.'"
I wonder which of these two conclusions the students will come to.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
I was born in Dallas, I was raised in Dallas, I went to college in the Dallas area, and I still live in Dallas.
I have _never_ been more ashamed of this city than I am now.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
That depends. If only students with a history of truancy are tagged, then I don't have a problem with this. However, as with all things handled by the government, they will eventually expand it to automatically tag all students, regardless of their attendance record.
-- Will program for bandwidth
I always joked that highschool was like prison. Nothing to do (with our poor education budget) but to wait to get out after you've served your 4 years. Now its really going to be true, thats really very sad.
Keep in mind a couple of things:
* The kids in the program were on the verge of being sent to the Texas Youth Commission, aka Juvenile Detention.
* Once you're in the TYC, you're likely to be beaten, raped, and held indefinitely.
When the choice is between being treated *like* a criminal, versus learning to *be* a criminal in Texas highly successful Criminal Conversion System, I think it's pretty obvious why any judge would choose to give the kid an ankle shackle instead of condemning him to (eventual) death.
Of course, the "choice" is mind-numbingly stupid. Now that the story of the TYC abuses has finally broken, maybe the next legislature will do something about the broken system that turns minor offenders into hardened criminals. Not likely, of course, because nobody ever got voted out of office for putting *too many* men, women, or children in jail.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Sounds like so much doublespeak to me.
What's next? Tattoos on the backs of the necks of the little snowflakes? Where are these kids parents, why aren't they getting involved and paying attention to what their kids are doing?
'You can paint this thing as either Big Brother, or this is a device that connects you to a buddy who wants to keep you safe and help you graduate.'"
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. - Benjamin Franklin
Freedom includes the right to screw up. Trying to protect people from themselves is the worst kind of tyranny. I only wish more people would realize this.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If I had a big brother, I'm sure that he, too, would want to "keep [me] safe and help [me] graduate."
However, I don't, and I did quite fine all by my self. The government can't even keep track of laptops, how are they supposed to keep track of kids?
It's total bull, just like airport security, only more intrusive. Why do all these "tracking" programs get tested on school kids? Just to get them used to the idea so by the time they're adults, they don't know any better...
It's shameful.
I was going to say that I have a problem with it no matter what, but on second thought, I think the question should go to the parents. Minors have limited rights, and if the parents want to monitor them using tools the state provides, in order to keep them in school, maybe that's OK. (Personally, if it were my kid, I would consider this a very desperate measure - it certainly doesn't foster mutual trust and respect.)
On the other hand, if this is forced on students without parents' consent, then it's a big problem.
Consider this: parents have a right to know where their kid is at all times; the school should only be concerned about that during school hours. When is the tracking turned off?
"To do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife..." --1984 by George Orwell
While Dave Leis' touching characterization of the device as "a buddy who wants to keep you safe and help you graduate" clearly comes straight from the heart, many students at the high school have expressed concerns this rule "cuts like a knife".
A spokesman for the school administration added that "We can't stop this thing we've started.".
...which is what these kids actually need.
If parents would actually PARENT, maybe we wouldn't need so much of a "Nanny" state. But until that happens, comparisons to 1984esque totalitarianism is absurd.
How is the information on the map any greater a risk than allowing a child to go outside without constant supervision? That's something 10 year old kids used to get to do, and there weren't more abductions when I was a kid (a short 20 years ago) than there are now.
As for the parent/family member part, they usually have a decent idea where their kids live, so they don't need a map to find them.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
While many Canadians will be glad to hear that they are monitoring Bryan Adams, the rest of us are left to wonder, wouldn't it have been more in the public interest to monitor Celine Dion?
School is NOT about education. It is simply jail/daycare for kids.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
They don't want to help you graduate... they want to get paid. Schools lose money when students don't show up. The whole program is simple math. They are planning on spend X amount of money on preventative programs in hopes of securing Y amount of dollars per student kept in school. They just need to make sure that X is less than Y and I'm sure that there are all sorts of studies that have been done by the vendor to prove that their device will reduce truancy by Z percent and that Z percent is high enough so that X will be less than Y.
Trying to force people to graduate is something that only benefits the school system, not the kids. You can't make them learn if they don't want to learn.
You can blame parents for failing to instill in their kids the idea that knowledge is valuable, but if they don't have it, electronically chaining them to the school is not the solution.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Golly gee, what are we teaching these kids? Think about it and you won't have to wonder why the world will be going downhill into the next generation. They learn by example and we're sure giving them one. By the way, kids do have full rights, given at birth by the constitution, just because we don't acknowledge it doesn't make it true. Just more proof that we're hypocrites and are happy to teach it to the youngest of us.
Wish I had those years back instead of wasting them in a 'public education/indoctrination institution'. I'm serious. My advice to any child is if you don't want to be there, drop out. It's mostly a waste of time. I cannot honestly point to anything I use today in life/career that I learned in school. Not a one. All you need now is an Internet connection and a library card. I'm convinced that if I had children I could have them well versed in the Greek classics and Latin by 11 years old. We are raising our children to be brainless machines & criminals.
How long will it be before that poor little bastard who always used to get stuffed into his own locker will be sitting in class with nine or ten of these things strapped from his ankles to his knees, and the threat of severe bodily harm hanging over his head if he complains.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
because politicians are more than willing to make us pay for them later in life. You know the type, never a good job, poor health, usually a few addictions that get their money, and worse - children who repeat the cycle
I think school was much better when the fear of punishment (the oppressive state) did very well in encouraging you to behave. The simple fact is, some of these people need to be whacked up side the head. They need a "big brother" though the government isn't the best option.
Here is the question, do you want to pay to keep them from screwing up in the first place or pay for them for the rest of their lives.
and all because we put more value on their "rights" than the rights of the society that has to tolerate and pay for them
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"the costs of an uneducated public"
is immense and you have the right of it in pointing out that a failure to have a sufficient portion of a society educated is going to result in a non-sustainable society.
BUT:
As others have pointed out, one of the costs of forcing the "at risk" (PC speak for "lost cause") kids into the regular classroom is the downward pressure they will exert (via disruptive behavior etc) of the marginal kids (the one's who really are "at risk") as well as those who might excell, but instead experience immense "peer" pressure (including violence) to underperform. And that is just the direct negative influence. The extra time and resources required from the teachers to try and simply maintain order and make minimal test scores means neglect of the more talented students.
So, I'd go one better than DISD and put those truant kids that accept the tracking device in separate classes - at a different location. This would help the beancounters recognize the real costs of dealing with the most disruptive "students" and allow the regular teachers some room to work with the students that are not actively hostile to learning.
The lessons for the truants could be considerably simpler with the consequences for both failure and sucess more immediately apparent. I don't know what sort of consequences should be involved (though I have a gut feeling electric shocks and candy bars would not get the desired result), but kids who ditch school a lot are not going to be big on the concept of deferred gratification and expecting otherwise is foolish.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
What puzzles me is how many people don't grasp that if you can't read and write by the time you are you are 13, you are never going to learn. All of the skills that are necessary to do just fine in society are learned before high school. Then from the other end, if you talk to most of the population that did graduate from high school, you will find that they got no education whatsoever from it. Oh, some people learned some things in high school, but it is a small percentage.
No, it doesn't help if the lady changing the sheets know algebra. Not at all. It doesn't help when the 7-11 clerk has a basic understanding of economics. If the landscaper didn't learn to read by the time he got to high school, he never will. The lawnmower mechanic will not able to fix a lawnmower any better with a knowledge of history. Every one of your examples doesn't show that high school is necessary. It show why it is a waste of time for a large portion of the population.
The particularly annoying part of this often repeated and always wrong argument is the complete lack of comprehension that lack of a high school education is not the same thing as lack of an elementary school education. High school drop out does not mean illiterate.
The push to get everyone a high school diploma has turned our high schools into a joke, and now we are starting to see the trend move into the colleges. I have a cousin that was retarded. She never developed past the mental capacity of a 4 year old. Yet, somehow she not only graduated high school, but also got a college degree. This is not a wonderful story of someone who overcame adversity. This is a shining example that going to, and graduating from both high school and college doesn't mean anything. It is a sad story of a society that has become so obsessed with SAYING that everyone is educated that they just changed the definition of what "educated" means.
Has anyone read Corey Doctorow's "Little Brother"? It not only describes this situation, but also the most likely response to it.
Anyone who thinks this is a good idea is not only an idiot, but is also the vilest danger to the American way of life I can imagine. First it's criminals. Then it's truant kids. Then it's all kids in school - to protect against child abuse you know. Then it's everyone, and objection to the policy is immediate grounds for suspicion ("Why are you complaining if you've got nothing to hide?").
Funny thing is, when we try to hold our government or corporations or even school boards up to the same transparency, they immediately throw hissy fits and start claiming executive privilege and "losing" emails. Why are they complaining if they have nothing to hide?
The crimes of eBay are a disgrace to it's pig latin heritage!
I'm lucky that my kids are sane and are doing well in school, but I'm aware that it is partly luck. I've known parents who thought things were okay, and felt that this was to their credit, only to find later that their 8th grader was part of a prostitution ring at school. Suddenly they felt that their own efforts were a little less of a factor, and all of a sudden it was "the culture," etc. We all want to take credit when things go well.