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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
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?
I live in the Dallas area, although I wasn't born or raised here. I don't think this is a reason to be ashamed of Dallas, just the Dallas ISD. The crap that the DISD board and administration pulls never ceases to amaze me.
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?
They have to start somewhere. If you look at the history of the US government over the past 100 years, this is exactly what you will see: small, seemingly harmless steps towards bigger and more powerful government that go unnoticed by the masses. Add up those 100 years of government expansion and today you've got a government that absolutely dwarfs the US government of only 100 years ago, both in revenue and power over the people.
Totalitarianism comes one small step at a time, never in one giant sweep.
"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.
Your right to screw up ends at my right to not have to subsidize your screw ups.
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.
Why? This isn't a requirement. It's an option equivalent to juvenile detention. As I see it, it gives a kid a choice between juvie and doing what they're supposed to be doing.
TFA clearly states that this is being used for kids with very serious truancy problems. It's not for some kid who's late a couple times. And if the kid prefers to wear the transmitter and go to school, great. And if not, he is detained under more traditional circumstances. At no time is the school system sneaking up on kids and tagging their ears -- this is a choice given to the kid and his family.
In theory, I agree with others around here that if it gets to this level, the parents relinquished control at some point. But be that as it may, until the kids are 16 they're not only the parents' responsibility, but the community's as well. You may take issue with the laws surrounding that issue, but that's not the point. The point is to make the child comply with existing attendance laws, and this seems to me to be a better way than locking them up with other kids who have screwed up their lives in whatever widely varying ways.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
and all because we put more value on their "rights" than the rights of the society that has to tolerate and pay for them
First off, I do agree that our school system has gotten weak, and that we don't enforce discipline. Discipline, btw, is the most importance concept in any modern debate involving education. Discipline, means responsibility and consequences, or course, both of which are lessons we are sorely lacking.
When I was in the school system (in the early 90s) far more time was spent telling me that Mexicans and Black people were people too, and that I should respect them, than teaching me math or reading skills (much less "critical thinking" skills), to me this was an unconscionable crime, with the latter the former is obvious, with the former your nothing more than a tolerant, but illiterate, imbecile.
I take affront, though, at your last line. The rights of individuals always trump society, unless those rights conflict with the rights of other individuals. Society, as such, has no rights, it is merely a collective of individuals. Holding society above individuals is the basis of all tyrannies and atrocities.
Just a little nit-pick.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey