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Ontario Teachers' Union Calls For Health-Related Classroom Wi-Fi Ban
New submitter KJE writes "The CBC is reporting that an Ontario teachers' union is calling for an end to new Wi-Fi setups in the province's 1,400-plus Catholic schools. The Ontario English Catholic Teacher's Association (OECTA) says computers in all new schools should be hardwired instead of setting up wireless networks. The OECTA, in its paper (PDF), said the 'safety of this technology has not thoroughly been researched and therefore the precautionary principle and prudent avoidance of exposure should be practiced.'"
Oh, it gets better.
In Ontario, Catholic schools are 100% fully-funded public institutions running in parallel with the secular public schools. It's nice to know that my tax dollars are being used to teach kids that gay=bad, safe sex=evil and wifi=devil.
Other provinces have joined the 21st Century and de-funded religious schools, but all of the political parties in Ontario are too chicken-shit to do the right thing.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
We've researched it with short wave radio, FM, AM, CB, and even cell phones. We've even researched the health effects of 2.4 and 5.4ghz signals. Wifi falls within this research since it's using the same spectrum and is if anything lower power.
So... not only is the complaint stupid.... it's also wrong.
Are they actually upset about this for the stated reason or are they claiming a health reason to justify opposing it for some reason?
I've dealt with too many of these political issues to take it at face value. There is often something else going on.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
While their reasons are crazy, running wired networks is the better thing to do. Keeps the spectrum clean for devices that actually need to be wireless. A classroom full of WiFi easily saturates to the point where performance degrades, especially when you have a bunch of students all loading material on cue from the teacher. While it's technologically possible to do it right with 5GHz if you control the client hardware selection, that is not what people who try to cut corners using wireless are doing; they chintz on APs as well.
I've seen a lot of colleges abandon their wire plant in favor of wireless in the dorms and even in the classrooms. Eventually they will end up putting it all back in as PoE is starting to prolifierate, and may make it into laptops as their power envelopes converge with what PoE can offer. At that point, in addition to all the building-integration devices and IP phones, they'll have demand again for wired connections from the end user. Unfortunately by that time, they'll have spent orders of magnitudes more money than a wired plant costs these days into remodeling, during which time they will have unwittingly allowed contractors to cut wires and leave them stranded in the wallboard with no record of where they are situated.
Wired networks these days are actually pretty cheap. Once you discount the top switches which you need anyway for APs and building integration, access switches can be had for short change.
Someone had to do it.