Slashdot Mirror
Kids Who Skip School Get Tracked By GPS
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from the Orange County Register:
"Frustrated by students habitually skipping class, police and the Anaheim Union High School District are turning to GPS tracking to ensure they come to class. The six-week pilot program is the first in California to test GPS. Seventh- and eighth-graders with four unexcused absences or more this school year are assigned to carry a handheld GPS device, about the size of a cell phone. Five times a day, they are required to enter a code that tracks their locations – as they leave for school, when they arrive at school, at lunchtime, when they leave school and at 8 p.m."
Because kids who regularly skip school can be relied upon to willingly cooperate in keeping and activating their own personal tracking device.
Are you fucking kidding me? Where these kids are after school hours is no business of the school, whatsoever. How about taking all the money they pissed away on this failure-to-be, and invest it in the teachers? Pay a little extra and hire people who don't suck at their jobs and maybe, just maybe, attendance won't be such an issue.
God damn I can't wait until California falls into the ocean.
All this will do is to condition these children to accept invasive tracking and surveillance. This is not a question of children's rights, it is a question of what those children will think is normal or acceptable in a decade, when they are adults.
Palm trees and 8
This, like so many other school programs, is an egregious violation of the students' rights. Yet, we allow it under the all to used "think of the children" guise. What it really results in is a bunch of people who are trained from childhood that violating their rights is OK if the right circumstances present themselves.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
The parents "volunteered" their kids.
GENERATION 24: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
I skipped quite often in high school, consequences be damned. I would have just left this in my locker and ignored it, not bothering to enter the code or keep it on me -- even on the days I was actually at school. I don't know why they expect this to stop anyone.
Well, maybe the part that they have to press a key sequence is wrong, but they don't know that - to see if they will follow rules. It probably tracks locations every minute so it can be reviewed later when bracelet is downloaded. In fact, maybe the key sequence is actually to download their data to the school for their data retention.
Why not track the parents instead? Why not require that the adults check in 5 times a day, insisting that they know what their spawn are up to.
A plastic bag and then aluminum foil. Or one of those mylar lined freezer bags?
Threatening someone with jail time or fines if they don't volunteer is like saying there is a mandatory donation required to attend a free event.
Orwell was an optimist.
How very educational.
What's going to keep these kids from handing the tracker to a younger sibling or to a friend who does actually go to class? "At eight o'clock, enter this code, or I'll tell Mom you screwed up!" Oh yeah, the truant student's own sense of "doing the right thing"...
I'd like to see the reaction of the parents. If my child were going truant a lot, I'd approve. Education is important, and it's hard to get that education if you avoid spending any time in the presence of your assigned educators. However, if I don't believe my child is being truant, then I'd be outraged. I can't see how the school can enforce this without parental cooperation. Especially the 8PM entry. That's essentially tracking what the parents do with their child, and when they send them to bed. Is the child going to be in trouble because he fell asleep on the couch at 7 and Dad carried him to bed without entering the ping at 8? What about when the parents decide to treat them to a movie that gets out at 8:15 at a theatre half an hour from home?
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
If the District Attorney chooses to prosecute, truant students could be sentenced to juvenile hall and parents could face up to a $2,000 fine, Pardo said.
In other words, if you miss school, we track you or you go to jail.
Perhaps we should also ask re-captured prisoners why they tried to escape.
"His name was James Damore."
8pm? what goddamn business is it of the government where your child is at 8pm? not that the rest of it isnt bad enough.
Where the fuck are the parents? TFA makes no mention of the parents involvement in this program, only school officials, police, etc. WTF? On top of that they get an AUTOMATED call reminding them to get to school. Where I come from, that's called an ALARM CLOCK. Really? Talk about teaching irresponsibility by taking the responsibility from them...forcefully. Here you go, now you don't have to worry about setting your alarm... it's all done for you now. Oh, and your parent doesn't have to do anything...
WTF? If this is about them skipping school, what does their location at 8PM have anything to do with whether or not they are at school?
I got nuthin
Maybe instead of treating students like cattle, schools should become more interesting and figure out why kids are actually skipping school.
I did all the time, until I was old enough to drop out, get a GED and head to college. I never missed classes in College because I was able to determine for myself what interested me and what goals I wanted to achieve.
This was because I had moved into a new school district that didn't really evaluate my needs, and instead stuck be in classes that were beneath the level of work I was doing in my previous school. I went from doing algebra and trigonometry to doing long division.
I'm sure that's not why all students skip school. I sure some are getting bullied, some are on drugs, and others are overwhelmed with their homework. Whatever the case, GPS won't solve the problems.
Threatening someone with jail time or fines if they don't volunteer is like saying there is a mandatory donation required to attend a free event.
So should they also scrap community service and probation options and stick everyone with pure jail-time instead? If you've done something you can be jailed for but they think you'll reform with some minimal oversight I don't see the issue with offering it as an option.
Juan Cruz's mom, Cristina, said she supports the program and hopes it helps her son get to school â" and stay there. "I understand that he's been missing class. He's one of six children, and we can't always keep an eye on him," she said in Spanish. "I think this is a good idea that will help him."
Ahh yes, crappy parents with too many kids want the state to raise their delinquent children... *sigh*
So basically, if they're at school it's redundant, and if they're not at school they're not going to use it. How is this supposed to be useful?
"Hey Billy, let's skip class and go to the mall!" "Ok, but I need to tell the police once we're there"
Schools are one step closer to becoming prisons. I do not condone truancy, but I cringe when I hear of solutions such as tracking students by GPS. Not only does it treat students like prisoners, but it conditions the students to accept such tracking as acceptable and they will grow up not seeing an issue with the government wanting to track them and control them. I don't know what is the best way to combat truancy, but there has to be a less invasive way. Fine the parents for unexcused truancy, since the sole reason schools want better attendance is to get more state monies since it is often tied to daily attendance. Sure the parents may not pay, but I'd rather the solution be something to encourage parents to make sure their kids go to school rather than have big brother stepping in to do it for the parents.
This is California, the state built on the foundation of "Save the Trees, Kill the Children."
Is there any mystery why the fuck they're in massive amounts of debt and suffering the biggest budget crisis of the state's history? Their answer to EVERY problem is to throw money at it. Kids not learning as well? Let's give them all iPads. Kids not eating well? Instead of teaching them healthy choices, let's remove all the vending machines. Kids not showing up at school? Instead of making school more appealing to them, let's tag them like cattle.
California is a state where passing the buck (literally and figuratively) has become not only a regular occurrence, but a fucking pastime.
Considering how badly funded many US schools are, with under-qualified teaching staff, does it make much difference whether the kids are actually there or not?
What a great waste of money. Great idea, take away from kids that actually want to learn.
Anything is possible given time and money.
Behold as I ... give it to my friend and tell him the code!!!! UNBELIEVABLE
Also what if I just throw the tracking device in a lake and continue skipping school? This just seems like a waste of resources - buying expensive GPS (they must be at least a GPS module and probably a cell phone radio?) units and giving them to kids who, as they are often skippers, don't really care about school or keeping in good condition the expensive thing you gave them.
This seems like the kind of tactic that would encourage a (potenital) miscreant who skips sometimes to just stop coming all together.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
Threatening someone with jail time or fines if they don't volunteer is like saying there is a mandatory donation required to attend a free event.
They're not picking random kids off the street for this. These kids are already facing juvenile hall. They a had a choice: go to school or get in trouble. Now they have another choice: go to school and be tracked or go to juvenile hall. These kids already made the first choice so now they (and their parents) are forced to make the second choice.
I'm not thrilled with the program - I think they should just lock the kids up in reform school/juvenile hall/whatever. They have free will and they made their choice so let them live with the consequences. Maybe they'll learn from their mistakes, or maybe not.
Threatening someone with jail time or fines if they don't volunteer is like saying there is a mandatory donation required to attend a free event.
So should they also scrap community service and probation options and stick everyone with pure jail-time instead? If you've done something you can be jailed for but they think you'll reform with some minimal oversight I don't see the issue with offering it as an option.
He didn't say that. He's just pointing out, correctly, that "volunteering" means there is little to no incentive to do something, but you do it anyways. Convicted criminals don't "volunteer" to accept community service or probation, they choose it as an alternative to options they consider worse. Just like I don't "volunteer" to go to work every day.
These kids are the same. To call it voluntary is a joke.
What stops a truant from giving it to the class geek for a dollar?
This comment was written with the intention to opt out of advertising.
"Hey Dexter, I got this GPS thing I have to keep inputting to. Put the codes in for me while I skip school again and I won't beat you up for the next week."
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
How many of you guys are actually teachers? As an educator, I actually this is a great idea. Students under 16 are required to be in school, so if they are truant we have to spend resources to sends truancy officer after them, then the kids have to show up in court, etc. This seems it would reduce those costs, both financial and educational.
It would only reduce costs if the child complies with the terms of the tracking or it causes the child to attend school instead of skipping. I honestly can't see why it would. If the threat of going to juvie didn't stop the kid from cutting in the first place, why would it stop them from not using their tracker?
Students under 16 are required to be in school
And there's the core problem.
My uni had that schizo policy: you had to pay "voluntary" contribution tickets. When, on the students' system, you read "This year, you are required to pay 8 voluntary contribution tickets", hilarity ensued. To be honest, if you didn't have that money, you could pay less, or nothing at all, but they could have chosen a better name. One that didn't blatantly lied would have been cool.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
Do you live in PA?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
As an educator, you are even below the lawyers because you pretend to do something useful while serving a barely-functional system that students escape from with exactly two things:
Support my political activism on Patreon.
As an educator, it's your right and responsibility to lobby to change fucked up laws. And truancy laws are truly overboard in the U.S. Change the laws and you won't have to bleed tax money on court proceedings, sending truancy officers, etc. It's really simple -- don't complain of it if you do nothing to change it.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Asian 12.09%
Filipino 3.94%
Hispanic 62.02%
Black 3.33%
White 17.17%
Free & Reduced Lunch 52.0%
Limited English Proficiency 27.6%
Fluent English Proficiency 36.1%
Native English speakers 36.3%
Now, who wants to take back their bigoted statements? Click reply to make apologies for unspoken assumptions about the low achievement levels of the student body.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
What happens if a kid doesn't report in reliably? Why not just make whatever that is the penalty for truancy in the first place instead of trying to fix a social problem with technology?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Simply reinforcing my notion that modern schooling is less about education and more about simply "jailing" children so mommy and daddy can go to work.
Is it any wonder why prison is such a growth industry in this country when we're institutionalizing them from age 6 onward?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I'm pretty sure that the kids would exceed your assessment of them if they went to school and learned something. Putting all the responsibility on teachers is a cop out. Parents need to teach their kids too ... and students need to learn. In the end the kids are responsible for how much or how little they've actually learned. A student with a book can learn many things without a teacher or parent. Without the student's cooperation a parent, teacher or book can't do a damn thing.
What's to stop them giving the codes and devices to someone who is going to class?
This system nicely straddles the horribly invasive and the pointlessly insecure, doesn't it?
For the 98% of you who didn't read the article - the schools pay $8 per day for GPS to make the kids come to school and the schools are then paid $35 per day (presented as school loses $35 per each kid per each absence). It's not about education or truancy or delinquency or anything else, it's about the almighty dollar. End. Of. Story.
7th grade, ah, the year we learned about smoking, and shortly after drinking, and thc. We also become more aware of the real situation of the nation, militarized thug coppery and your future slavery to the bankstrocity. The fragile times of deciding right from wrong, understanding law vs violent tyrannic power, of loving your neighbor and putting a cap in his or her ass, of course they want to train us to be slaves and accept the fascist patriot act while tossing out the us constitution, George Washington, and our souls so we can work for the TSA. Ah 7th grade, our parents finally have to leave us alone, there is no choice, they can't baby us forever.
It seems to me it's better to shut down the school. If they would just teach something worth while in the real world like electronics+math or science+physics, perhaps the school wouldn't have to keep students. It's not that I don't think black history is important, but I think the original founding of the nation, the us constitution and bill of rights and where they have strayed down the path by foreign and corporate oath breakers are today of a bit more importance.
Math class could discuss things like Debt to GDP or why establishment supplied unemployment statistics are always wrong or what happens to the dollar when the printing press runs.
why the banksters are not in jail, could be social science / law
But no, in four years we'll have another generation of meth users who work at burger king and can't count the fucking change when you give them an extra 11 cents to make a dollar change. Then four more years and we'll have them on slashdot saying you have no right to privacy, or a domain, or webhosting, or free speech, and on and fucking on. Of course none of them will ever have owned an M1 Carbine and 30 round clip, a shotgun, or gone deer, or duck hunting, which is why we have all these forest fires, idiots never been in cub scouts, boy or girl scouts don't know how to build a fucking safe fire. How many kids can use a soldering gun/pencil/flame and repair something? Not only is everything surface mount, nobody cares about ham radio. Can't they teach kids to make an emergency doublet antenna with low swr? Or first aid, or how to wire a 48 channel mixer?
Soon they will have all these mobile devices, and ipads, net pads whatever, and facebook and google can document all their shit for the government. They'll never know bbs software, fidonet, pgp at the command line, telnet, or an mfm drive. There is no Fravia to teach them to love coffee, v0dsky, or life, to be analytic, careful, or how to search those retarded errors in /var/log/message. Nope, they'll show up in all the blogs, asking the same old droning shit. Why doesn't my X work. What's a path, now whats file not found mean? Which is why we will have to keep writing the how-to's.
Back to the school issue.
I think tossing the constitutional ramifications aside, I'd like to know who funds the GPS thingy here. There has to be money involved, GPS don't grow on trees. Who pays? Who profits? Who analyzes the data? There's where you should be filling out the pink slips, and drawing lines in the sand.
If I was going to skip school that GPS tracker would be at the bottom of a river sooner rather than later.
Where I live if your child has excessive unexcused absences then both the child and the parent have to report to court. The parent can face fines and/or community service relating to contempt of court if the child continues to be truant or the parent doesn't show up for court.
It makes the parent responsible, and we don't condition our children to believe that "big brother" is normal. That's Google's job :P.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Kids won't be stopped by that. Maybe each day they'll nominate one friend to carry all the stupid devices to school and log in while the others goof off. Or worse, they'll probably threaten some small kid to do it for them.
"Microsoft killed my company, I hold a personal grudge. I don't use Microsoft products and neither should you."-JWZ
INVASION OF PRIVACY! This is ridiculous. First off the school which I am assuming is a public school has not authority force a child to do anything without the consent of the guardian of the child. Second, if this is put into effect how long before your employeer is like well Mike is five minutes late for work in the morning, I'm gonna strap a GPS on him to see where he is and when he leaves his house and where he hangs out after work. Nope simply will not fly. Second can the school ensure that the GPS data is completely protected from hackers or people looking to track the student. I think not yet. If the GPS data were to fall into the wrong hands say a person looking to do harm to children he would be able to pin point where this kid and when he would appear to be alone. This is a dangerous concept and school be removed from the school place. If the school really wants to stop cutter do the GOD DAMN OLD FASHION WAY AND YELL AT THE PARENTS.
If you read the fine article, you'll see it raised the attendance rate from 77% up to 95% in other locations.
Completely absurd. When I was in high school, my friends and I regularly skipped 9 days per semester (as the limit was 10). I proceeded to go to college, get a degree and have a successful (so far) career. High school was a dreadful place to be, and forcing things in this way is just going to make the kids resent it even more. This is major overkill, people in that district need to get a grip on reality. ...in other news, Anaheim Union High School District votes Monday to place snipers on rooftops to guard against jaywalkers near campus.
Lol you had truancy officers? Shit, good thing my county didn't have those when I grew up. I thought that shit only worked in towns of like 200. I mean how is the truancy officer gonna find some 12 year olds out playing in the woods? Truancy Officers = Waste of money IMHO. Taking a kid to court for skipping school = Even bigger waste of money.
If the kid doesn't want to go, and you call the parent and they don't fix it.. then who gives a damn? Not me.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
You'll know that the cell phone is moving when you see a picture of the inside of the kid's pocket.
That's like saying that the school nerd volunteers to hand over his lunch money to avoid being punched in the face by the school bully.
Many of the most important people in the history of the world never went to school or left well before eighteen; today they'd be considered juvenile criminals.
You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car - hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
You saved me the hassle of torturing english to say the same thing, albeit with lot of spelling and grammar atrocities intermixed.
Nowadays every kid has a cell phone. Why not allow the schools to install an app. that automatically relays their location back to the school every five minutes?
The kids may decide to just leave the cell phone somewhere. Luckily cell phones have cameras too. If you automatically relay a picture back every hour, you can ensure that the cell phone is moving and that the kid is near it. Or require the kid to take a picture of his face next to a clock every hour.
Surely that's not overly intrusive.
Verizon wireless already has the feature that (naturally) costs like ten bucks a month to relay cell phone GPS data to a website so parents can track location. It's simple: the school will require the student to CALL the truancy office during the times of day for a verbal authenticator and the phone can be checked against location. No stupid codes that someone else can punch in on the delinquent child's behalf.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
You cannot assume that EVERY kid has a cell phone. Not all families are wealthy, you know...
Issuing a cell phone for the purposes of checking in with the school would probably be far cheaper than the units that they'll end up using. It will be used only to call the school during the proscribed times for the purposes of voice verification while matched against the GPS location.
Simple and effective.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
I'm pretty sure that the kids would exceed your assessment of them if they went to school and learned something.
Yes, exactly. If they actually went to school and learned something they would exceed my assessment.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Because the stats so far say it does. Or does your honest thoughts trump the measured results?
...and watch how often they are in the same place.
I guess the laws didn't permit to charge a fee, so they masked it as a donation.
If a child/teenager doesn't want to learn, there is no point about forcing him/her into school. That's a sad fact to say, but where I went to school, a mother tried to sue the town school system for flunking her son. Well, duh, when he came to school in the morning, he had already smoked some stuff. He had no interest in learning anything.
So, back on topic: If some dumb-ass does not want to learn, there is no point in forcing him/her to go to school.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Instead of the GPS, why not.. check to see if they are at school? If those blasted kids are not going to trick you into thinking that they are at school by making it appear as if they are in school... why do they even care about tricking the GPS let alone honoring it?
Being sent to a prision should be a bit different from being sent to a school.
Rethinking email
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0112617.html
http://www.ecs.org/ecs/ecscat.nsf/WebTopicView?OpenView&count=-1&RestrictToCategory=Attendance--Truancy
Apparently the pilot is supposed to evaluate whether this is more cost-effective than serving warrants and the like. What's interesting to me, there isn't much available in terms of national data for effects of truancy: http://gradworks.umi.com/32/58/3258431.html
"An important implication of this study is that researchers are not able to examine the true extent of truancy in this country because each state has a different way of defining truancy. This also makes it impossible to interpret the statistical data on truancy rates because there is no system or statewide information. The lack of consistency in defining truancy makes it difficult to make comparisons. "
How many times has Slashdot said "IT should not be the solution to the business/societal/cultural issue"? Prime example right here, the GPS device should not be doing the job of the parent(s) and the community.
When I was in high school I was permitted to substitute 1 of my high school classes for a college class. The reason being that I couldn't substitute anymore was that the school last funding on my attendance for subbing out more than 1. I'm wondering if there is a similar issue going on here. Could lack of attendance reduce funding that a school gets for a student?
You're missing the point. It is not the truants themselves that will be conditioned, but their fellow students. They'll grow up thinking its normal for "bad" kids/people to be tracked like cattle. That will become acceptable.
It is not acceptable. Its a violation of our fundamental rights, and, at least in the US, our society needs to be made to realize that and fight against this sort of thing. It's against the basic principals that our country was founded for
If I were one of those kids I'd destroy the device disregarding the possible consequences as an act of disobedience to this 1984 attempt.
Administrator Big Brother is watching!
This needs more cowbell!!!
I doubt that kids have enough folding dough to make this truly profitable, unless you count pre-tit poontang from the girly-truants. (If inept sex is all you can manage; go for it. :-)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The right thing to do is to just let them go. Nobody learns anything without wanting to. Forcing kids who don't want to learn to be in school hurts everyone who is there to learn. Forcing kids who do want to learn to be in school just holds them back. School should be 100% voluntary.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
God's been doing this to muslims for centuries.
when i was a kid i skipped all the time. like most geeks of my era did. are school system is ran like a jail and nobody wanted to be there.my school had a 94% dropout rate.i still managed a high grade point being i aruldy knew what was tought attendance didn't mean shit. of course when they started threatening me with bs i dropped entirely. got my ged and whent to tec school and am now a server admin. others drop due to bullys or drugs. if they ever said take this gps or else to me i would have smashed it right in front of them. but if you notice the grade levels they are targeting its kids who do not have the option to tell them to go to hell without there parents help. the issue has always been how public school suck and seem to get worse and adding more jail like bs to it only makes it worse. but as everyone said hear its all abought forcing kids to become dedicated worker bees unwilling to stand up and say no to stupid shit. hell thats are problem now theres to few like me willing to sand up and say fuck off.
they are never a monsterous distraction in an already over-crowed classroom.
Who cares, if they don't want to be in class that badly, they're probably not contributing anyway.
Just inform their parent[s] or guardian on every absence and give them the grade they earn.
If they fail, they fail.
If you coerce them into following the rules like that, they will probably end up the last place we want them to be, law enforcement.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
It probably would be cheaper, but then the superintendent's brother in-law will have wasted millions of dollars to create these devices which was the whole point of this idea in the first place: making money at the taxpayers expense. Because California isn't corrupt and bankrupt enough already.
Practically this might be useful in regards to crime control etc. But really irritating for kids that are just bored going to day care/er public school, however statistically those would be a minority.
Hello Cruel World
i doubt that any of the kids were the ones to volunteer. also anaheim is a pretty ghetto so a comparison to the "hoods of baltimore" wouldn't be that far off.
pff.. physical abuse is just another weapon, like this gps. a weapon that'll get misused. that's why corporal punishment was banned in the first place: misuse.
"Students under 16 are required to be in school, so if they are truant we have to spend resources to sends truancy officer after them, then the kids have to show up in court, etc."
That's a state by state thing. I went to school 5 miles from anaheim and was truent enough to get kicked out of 4 schools between 7th and 10th grade. There were no truancy officers sent to come after me or even call my parents. There was no court I had to attend. All that happened was that there would be a meeting between me, my parents and the principle where it would be decided that the best thing for me was to start going to a continuation or alternative school (which I would end up getting kicked out of as well).
What exactly do you think these things are going to do? If my school gave me one of these things, i may have used it but not to check in.
Because the stats so far say it does. Or does your honest thoughts trump the measured results?
Incorrect. The stats say that the tracking devices, combined with...
The students are also assigned an adult coach who calls them at least three times a week to see how they are doing and help them find effective ways to make sure they get to class on time.
get them to class more often. Mentors by themselves have been shown to dramatically decrease truancy. These tracking devices have not.
And why do you feel the need to be sarcastic? It seems to be an epidemic around here I just don't understand.
Also, in case anyone's interested in what happens when Baltimore, one of the cities cited as a success story in this article, simply tries to enforce its truancy laws, you can see an article about it here. The short answer is a 27% increase in attendance, although they don't give many specifics about the increase.
They are being threatened with "prosecution with a potential stay in juvenile hall." and "letting kids skip school without a valid reason is, in fact, a crime." How could you possibly call that volunteering?
Additionally, yes, for now, it is just the bad, bad truants. People that citizens would be reluctant to defend or start an outcry over. But this is a pilot program. Once pilots are successful (or I suspect in a case like this, even if it's not) they are expanded to larger groups. I wonder if in the future they will get the ability to track students via their cell phones. Maybe a mandatory smart phone app that periodically calls home with GPS data.
Hi Geekoid,
I grew up on base with an actual drill instructor for a father. I have heard bullets fired in anger fly past my head. I have a decade and a half teaching experience. My kids shoot, climb, cave and scuba-dive, all activities which cheerfully kill the undisciplined. My hair is short and gray, which judging from your user ID, yours probably is as well.
Even I think you're wound a little tight on this. :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion, class assignment, dulled responses, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are good training for permanent underclasses, people derived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And in later years it became the training shaken loose from even its own original logic -- to regulate the poor; since the 1920s the growth of the school bureaucracy and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling just exactly as it is, has enlarged this institution's original grasp to where it began to seize the sons and daughters of the middle classes."
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm ... Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there."
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit?
So, yes, give schools more money and they will do this even better:
http://www.thewaronkids.com/
I suggest just give the money as a basic income to the parents instead... :-) because ultimately local schools will grow into larger vibrant community learning centers open to anyone in the community and looking more like college campuses. New York State could try this plan incrementally in a few different school districts across the state as pilot programs to see how it works out."
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
"New York State current spends roughly 20,000 US dollars per schooled child per year to support the public school system. This essay suggests that the same amount of money be given directly to the family of each homeschooled child. Further, it suggests that eventually all parents would get this amount, as more and more families decide to homeschool because it is suddenly easier financially. It suggests why ultimately this will be a win/win situation for everyone involved (including parents, children, teachers, school staff, other people in the community, and even school administrators
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
My kids go to a small private coop school. They are bummed when there is NO school. Why is nobody asking why schools are so boring that kids are making an effort to get out of them? And as a parent I've in the past supported my kids effort to play hookie if I considered the activity they were planning a better educational experience.
Damn, kids nowadays are so lucky. Can you imagine how many pranks you could play with this one? Put it in a watertight bag and throw it in the river. Mail it to another country. Leave it outside a strip club. The list goes on... These people really trust misbehaving kids an awful lot.
The tracking device, if given to me, would end up in the closest storm sewer!
When I first moved from New York to Florida as a 16 year old. I made the move from a highly competitive school W.T. Clarke which year after year competes (successfully) in the " Intel Science Talent Search" formerly the "Westinghouse Science Talent Search" to a school called Dunedin High School where the focus was clearly on keeping kids from being a nuisance to the voters (elderly people who like to walk in the air conditioned shopping malls during the day).
:
I was in utter shock that there would be two full time armed police officers on the premises of the school. I had been used to walking to 7-Eleven for lunch in my New York high school but was required to stay on the campus at all times during the school day in this state run penitentiary. I was absolutely amazed at how little responsibility the students showed as they had become dependent on the police and the administration to keep them in line instead of simply being given positive reasons to do so. In short, this was a nightmare for a person who had been raised to think intelligently and responsibly for themselves. I left high school shortly after and chose to start college prematurely instead. I needed an environment where students were educated as opposed to policed.
Your point is true though. Kids these days walk around with gobs of cash and gadgets. As a father raising a 7 and 8 year old in a neighborhood of "entitled people", I can safely say that it doesn't take much for a kid near us to milk mom and dad for $100. All they have to do is say 'we're going on a field trip and I want to buy a toy in the gift shop after' and boom, there you go.
Since I hate school administrators that simply don't use their brains, let me help a little.
1) Kids can't be trusted to be responsible enough to activate this stuff 5 times a day. It's stupid to do it anyway. Instead, the tracking system can choose to log the device's results during each class period where the student should be present and toss the other results to avoid privacy concerns.
2) The GPS units are going to get lost. You can't depend on the students actually remembering where they put them. Teachers are going to be sick of "can I be excused, my house arrest collar is in my locker and I don't want to get in trouble". It's the new "I need to go to the bathroom ploy"
3) As mentioned in the poster, kids are going to help other kids out by carrying their bracelets for them. In fact, a popular kid can skip all day and get counted as present just by taking advantage of one kid in each class who wants to earn his favor and the those guys will organize handing it off between classes when needed... no problem. The gps units should warn when there are 3 of them within a small radius. Two is a problem since boyfriends and girlfriends tend to intertwine themselves in hallways.
The best solution for this is to issue house arrest bracelets on the way in and on the way out of school each day. Or better yet, a house arrest bracelet which stays locked from the time they're put on until after a certain hour of the day has been reached and the bracelet is back in the presence of the charging unit at the student's house. If the bracelet isn't in locked and in contact with human PH levels (meaning skin) by 8:30am, then the school will call the student's mother for a reason why the criminal... I mean student isn't wearing their house arrest brace... I mean GPS sensor. If the mother/father clears it, then the bracelet will be deactivated remotely for the day. If not, then a high pitched nasty nasty hissing noise will be emitted from the bracelet until it's placed on the student. When the student comes home and scans their fingerprint on the base station, then the criminal tracker will release itself and the student will be free to behave like miscreants.
Bonus features
1) Electric shocker
If a student is doing something wrong or not quickly enough, the a high voltage shock can be administered to get them moving. Let's say they're walking to school and aren't moving f