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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.'"
Hey its more jobs, right?
On your cellphone
Take the microwaves out of the teacher's lounges.
"There's no scarcity of spectrum any more than there's a scarcity of the color green.", David Reed
Do I really have to say more?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Probably the same reason the word 'nuclear' (as in nucleus') has been dropped from 'MRI'.
This is dumb beyond words. These are the people teaching our children? Could be fun in 20 years.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
I haven't read the article, but if it's about doing it hardwired rather than WiFi, and if it doesn't severely inconvenience anyone, why not? I don't currently agree that it's harmful by the way.
About students who may be inconvenienced by this, well, not much can be done aside from perhaps having network cords readibly accessible in common areas where laptops are used.
What about the safety of chairs, has that been thoroughly researched? No, and therefore the precautionary principle and prudent avoidance of exposure to sitting on your ass 6 hours a day should be practiced.
You sound bitter
So a Catholic teacher's association is complaining that something isn't fully scientifically researched, documented, and proven? A CATHOLIC association? Galileo Galilei is laughing in his grave right now.
What the fuck is happening to my country? This is the kind of fear mongering and ignorance I'd expect from the American deep south but not in my own backyard.
Am I going completely mad?
There's two stories here.
The 1st one is the exoteric "I'm scared of technology" FUD that frankly works pretty well.
The 2nd one is the esoteric and totally unpopular "I'm sick of kids playing angry birds in class" and "I'm sick of my boss (principal) and/or family and friends IMing me stupid distracting stuff while I'm trying to teach a class" and "I'm sick of the boss using this to track my every digital action and create utterly meaningless dilbertian machine generated metrics to evaluate me on instead of doing real human observation evals" and "I'm sick of square peg / round hole the silver bullet to all educational problems is just add more internet"
I send my kids to a recently wifi'd school and also have some teacher relatives and option 2 is the reason why they use option 1 as a weapon against wifi.
See, option 1 works and thats all they care about in a "ends justify the means" scenario. If blaming witchcraft or the spread of communism on wifi worked better, they'd be trying that angle instead.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
They didn't also require AC receptacle plug covers installed so electricity doesn't leak out of the wall sockets and give everyone cancer.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Greate excuse for some defensible religion hate..... Almost therapeutic.
Next they will be against forms of birth control. Oh, wait...
Honestly, I think it's time to re-evaluate the usefullness and legitimacy of the "Precautionary Principle". Over and over it's being invoke to deprive people of a known, verifiable *benefit*, in the name of unknown, unverified "dangers" - essentially "We know WiFi/whatever provides a benefit; but *someone* has made the unfounded, not supported by the evidence claim that there might be some risk of health problems, so let's deny people the known benefits in order to avoid unknown risks.
As far as WiFi - it's not like it's brand new and untested. It's been around for over 10 years now. Wouldn't we have seen (or be starting to see) any problems by now?
This union should be ashamed of themselves. Don't they realize the threat of all these cords that they are proposing? People could trip over them, or get wrapped up and asphyxiated with them. Won't they think of the children? All it takes is one little accident, and a little kid won't be going home to their parents. Maybe it's just safer not to have any computers in the classroom at all.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I would expect this from Alberta, but Ontario?
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Take the microwaves out of the teacher's lounges.
This would also eliminate a potential source of interference. Less things for IT to go chasing around.
Maybe I'm being paranoid, but personally I'm much more concerned about the ubiquity of old lead pipes in the school buildings around here. Lead leaching into the water supply is a huge risk, especially for children, in whom it can cause learning disabilities. That's right, drinking the water in these schools is, statistically, causing learning disabilities in at least some of the students. But that would cost a whole lot to fix, and so instead we hear unsubstantiated hocus-pocus about wi-fi signals.
It's kind of like saying "I have a rock in my pocket, that prevents lions from eating us."
Now we all know the rock isn't preventing the lions, there are none in canada, so they CAN'T eat us. Let it go.. But letting something like that just "go"
gives plausibility to the whole "lions not eating people because of the rock stuff".
So It is bad, and it makes them look like idiots.
Why does it have to be this article that makes you think that all educators are stupid? This is what I do not understand about people.
If an engineer makes a bad bridge, it collapses and people die, do we look at EVERY other engineer and say, "YOU DID THIS, IDIOTS!!!"
So, why then, do we judge all educators on the merit (or lack-thereof) of a few?
Including the kids.
Teachers.
I say we get them out of classrooms. I mean, they could be causing cancer in our children. I know this might seem like crazy talk, but I know three kids who developed cancer after going to school, and I don't know of any who developed cancer without attending school. And cancer rates have been on the increase ever since mandatory public education was introduced to society. No scientific study has proved that there is no link between teachers and cancer, despite the best efforts of the pharmaceutical-educational complex that runs the New World Order these days.
Wake up, sheeple!
This is a Catholic school system in Ontario. Maybe they're terrified some pedophile priest will be recorded on video and streamed to the Internet. Ontario Catholic schools are home to the "largest case of non-residential school sex abuse by a Roman Catholic priest in North America".
Everybody knows that running Cat5 is expensive and difficult in aging school buildings! Instead, have every student (and teacher) craft their very own Tinfoil Hat as an art project!
It'll "protect" them from all these horrible microwatts of non-ionizing radiation and provide a life-enriching art project at the same time!
Problem solved.
The union should feel free to contact me so I can tell them where to send the check for my consulting fee.
This article embodies the general tone in schools and universities over here. Profs aren't allowed to think too hard, or else they will ruin the illusion of conformity the WASPs so desperately crave.
Looking back at my education, I can think of maybe... 5 profs that actually knew their stuff. Okay, 5 and a half, because I forcefully enlightened one of them. The other hundred-ish ? Mindless imbeciles, going through the motions, reading from cue cards, collecting their extortionate paycheques. Like any organisation, the larger it grows, the lower the common denominator. Of course, the cue card readers hated the real profs like a redneck hates an educated black man. "How dare they rock the boat ?"
If they want to ban Wi-Fi in the classrooms, they can knock themselves out. It will only make it ever so slightly more obvious that our educators are a cabal of imbecilic swine.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I have to say that I see no reason to use wireless networks when a much faster and more reliable hard wired network is an option. I'm not saying they should not have wireless available, just that classroom computers (any non mobile device really) should be hard wired.
With the down pricing of tablets and the move to open text books. Class rooms will have cheap tablet based text books in less than 5 years. One tablet will cost less than 3 text books. The choice will be easy. Tablets will be wifi connected, not wired.
This means any such wired policy and expense will have less than a 5 year life time. Lots of expense for little long term benefit. I doubt they can see the future.
1) no, there are not just as many studies saying it's bad. That fact is very easy to prove.
2) any ambiguity is really ironic anyway, as the considerable research into their Christian God has very unambiguously found no proof whatsoever of the slightest truth to it...
There is/was a movement in Europe for this as well.
FTFA:It recommends revising current threshold values of absorption, while encouraging all member states of the European Union (EU) to “take all reasonable measures to reduce exposure to electromagnetic fields.” And by reasonable, the proposal is advocating a ban on Wi-Fi and cell usage in schools
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3ezzmm5
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3wgd2mu
Can you believe that this American educators are this stupid? Only in the USA!
. (oh wait)
You sound distressed. Being distressed can have serious long-term health consequences. Therefore, to improve public health, these educators should be removed from this world, or at least stamped with Surgeon General's warning: "Taking This Individual Seriously May be Hazardous to Your Health".
Ezekiel 23:20
as well as they the human body radiates about 100Watts or 500 times more power than the maximum allowed power from a WiFi access point. Going out it sun is definitely out as at 1kW per square meter of 5000 times strong than WiFi that definitely going to be fatal...
What a load of Bollocks!
D.
Why stop at 2.45GHz? My monitor seems to put out some good interference, as well as the power cables that are run right next to the antenna wire in my car. I say we they get rid of all EM radiation.
My offer is $100, but if your rock fails me, you must use some of that $100 to buy a wireless router to kill the Lion that ate me.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
...that just because you are a teacher doesn't mean you are intelligent. This is something I figured out fairly early on in high school, but believe kids should be told it up front so they don't treat everything the teacher says as absolute fact. Not that they should disregard everything a teacher says, but teachers are people and people can (and, in my opinion, usually are) stupid. So they can certainly be wrong, not that many teachers will own up that fact (the good ones will.)
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.
Seems like the local IT would rise up in opposition. I would not expect the school IT to take much of a political stand for fear of job security. But just on the technical merits alone I could make a case that everything with a moving electron is a potential source of harm to humans.
Sigh...potential long term effects are known. There are not any.
Their belief is irrational. It goes against the majority of evidence concerning low power radio waves effects on human tissue.
Weve had radio for what, over a hundred years now? Weve had 2GHz+ radio for how many decades?
Is that not long term enough?
Tinfoil hats for all! Not only will it prevent problems from wifi, it will also stop the gubbment mind control devices
Actually, not all studies are created equal, but what we *do* know is that there are more *quality* studies showing that it is harmless at the power levels in use today, than there are *quality* studies showing harmful effects.
Here I thought this was going to be about the safety of the data, i.e. security of wireless encryption (or utter lack thereof). I guess I gave this teacher's union too much credit.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Very true.
Many to most teachers are very stuck in their ways and do not like trying new things or admitting that they do not know something. My personal turn on the phrase is, "One of the hardest things to do is to teach a teacher." I could go into many reasons for this, but suffice it to say, you are not far from the mark at all. Are all teachers this way? No, of course not. It's not even always a young vs. old divide. I do, however, find that some, if not all, of the "best" teachers are those that are willing to admit they are wrong, learn from their mistakes, and admit that there will always be more that they do not know.
Mess not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
Yeah, radios are so experimental.
I think you fell into the sar-chasm.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
to do the cable work over just running a cable for the AP.
Where is a sar-chasm? That makes no sense.
I live in Alberta and we're having the same problem with this kind of derp in regards to WiFi and power lines. Is there a Canadian movement I can join against this nonsense? The only people that seem to be somewhat organized are the tinfoil hatters.
Fire 90% of the teachers, replace 'em with computers that serve multimedia instruction, online tests, etc.
Khan Academy FTW!
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
but...but...the frequencies!
horror vacui
I work with a helpdesk that supports several school districts. While we occasionally encounter some of the very best teachers who are striving to leverage their IT assets as tools to enhance the teaching environment by asking about advanced topics or tools, most of the time its stuff that a simple web search or pressing the F1 key would provide the answer.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
I do, however, find that some, if not all, of the "best" teachers are those that are willing to admit they are wrong, learn from their mistakes, and admit that there will always be more that they do not know.
That's got nothing to do with teachers though. That is a trait that is probably shared by most of the best in any field.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
You can read Park's editorial at http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/93/3/166.full.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Do you realize the flux of neutrinos we endure day in, day out? Thousands of these little suckers go whizzing right through our bodies every single day. Some, apparently, at superluminal velocities. If one of those hits you, look out - you'll feel the sting even before it happens! And if one if these should strike the nucleus of one of the atoms of which your body is composed, unlike WiFi radiation, it is ionizing. I demand that our school be shielded to prevent these neutrinos from entering our classrooms. Think of the children!
...Catholics are advocating pulling out?
So in addition to ignoring research, common sense, science, and the list of potentially more harmful (but more mundane) technologies, their going after a technology application that could be used to protect their kids of dangers online, improve access to research and educational tools, and help them to be a citizen of the 21st century. All while ignoring the ancient ballasts in the overhead lighting of EVERY SCHOOL IN CANADA? Updating the lights, and putting shielded wiring would do more to 'protect' kids than removing low power transmitters. It does fit with most Canadian policy approaches to technology.
Question, slashdotter.
At the risk of going slightly offtopic...
Have you ever been somewhere with no electricity? Do you know what that feels like?
I've only experienced this a few times in my life. I have to say that when combined with no phone signal i felt a sense of peace i've never felt before. I now want to experience the same thing but in more squalid conditions to see if it's a coinsideance of nature you often get in such electrically quiet situations.
I've also spent time in tower blocks away from city noise and there's still a sense of buzzing. But the air isn't as clean... am i imagining these things.
Might wifi be similar to the grid in effects?
It's really inconvienient for a tech addict
A blog I run for the wealth
I agree. Let's just shield schools from the whole EM spectrum, including light. On top of the safety, think of the energy they'll save! Well, in Canada anyway...
right?
Wifi. Pfft.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What about microwave ovens? I'd expect their signal to be more like a fire, but I'm no expert.
That's that bullshit Fox News "controversy" thing all over again. Take something that is obvious and accepted by everyone with a brain, get some skeptic on to say "you haven't proven a negative!" and sell it as a controversy where both sides should be given quarter.
Perhaps they're trying to make a clever counter-appeal to the administration's ignorance. Hear me out:
If some idiot tried to mandate that all classroom computers had to be wireless, a smart network admin might jot down a bunch of reasons to go wired. While there are no known health effects of wireless signals (and not likely to be at all), it wouldn't hurt his case to add these "concerns" as a bullet point to a PHB, somewhere amongst performance, reliability and security.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I have yet to meet a teacher in elementary school who can use a computer yet alone comment on the health concern and technology behind wireless networks. I don't think the teachers union is the right group to go at this, I think maybe the IEEE might just be a little more qualified to make this call. After all I had one teacher in grade 8 who didn't know it was possible to save an image from the world wide web, I had another who thought hacking was opening up a window that had only text on it and no graphics!!!!
I'm not joking about those 2 situations.
Canada, however, is in America. :)
Environmentalism and the precautionary so-called principle are both big lies, functionally equivalent to "I've got mine - F^&%% YOU!" OR "Destroy progress the modern age and liberty all in one whack". Perhaps the yuppie-techie side of the Obama coalition will begin to see the truth: these envronmental whackos are the Enemies of Humanity, at least as thoroughly as ever a Hitler, a Stalin, or a Mao was.
Hmm. On one hand, the radio technology used in Wifi should not be creating any health-related issues (the engineers would have let that slip by now if they thought it was an issue; as the saying goes, it's mathematically possible, but highly unlikely). On the other hand, I hate Wifi, and love wired connections (wired is always faster, guaranteed if you can get a link light, isn't shared like wireless, and less insane provided there are enough ports / the network uses switches and not hubs).
So, the right idea with the wrong reasons. I was going to recommend going straight to fiber, but the price premium may not be worth it (I can't seem to find any commercial / business grade rack-mountable fiber gigabit switches with 48 ports -> closest was a NetGear with 12 fiber ports for ~$600) and the fiber NICs on NewEgg are carrying a hefty price premium for even stuff in the 10/100 range (the technology which is how old now?).
Hmm, even though it's fiber, those 10/100 workstation NICs should have been dirt-cheap by now...
I am John Hurt.
You know catholics and they're undying insistance on mounds of evidence before they casually believe something.
More insidious.
Now there is only one or two computers for the class to use. Now he or she gives out 'facebook time' as a reward.
And the cabling contract, of course. Too bad about the delays.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Cell phones are digital. It doesn't matter what data they transmit the carrier wave is digital.
But it's not like a square (sharp) wave can cut you.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
If they are lucky local IT is a volunteer parent who knows his/her shit.
If they are average local IT is a maintenance guy that knows how to configure a wireless router.
If they are unlucky the district contracted the local IT to EDS.
Ether IT has no political leverage or it all already well expended kneading the government tit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You'll buy property under electrical fields of extreme voltage towers that can light florescent on the ground. And you allow cellphone towers to be built that operate at hundreds of times the wattage of a WiFi router... What *****ing doctors of homeopathy do you have running your **** show?
No Lions in Canada, you say? You sure about that?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Seems like the local IT would rise up in opposition.
Are you kidding? All that spectrum no longer being used? We could have wireless internet at gigabit speeds on mountain tops! And thanks to the ban on EM radiation, no-one will be allowed to use the equipment needed to detect that we're doing it!
you're either a troll or a very stupid person!
2gig radio is relatively new in terms of exposure of the general population, wi-fi has really only been common in the last 10 years, and that is by no means long enough to come to the conclusions you have come to. So no long term effects are not known. Get back to me when the first generation to recieve exposure reaches middle age then you might have a point.
Which Frequency?
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
No, but watch out for sawthooth waveforms!
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
I live in Australia and for all but a tiny portion of the country the children would have to live in a deep cave wearing burqas and sunglasses to get so little light exposure that they wouldn't get enough vitamin D. You don't need to get sunburnt to get vitamin D. Also skin cancer is very common here, probably due to sunburn being seen as just part of nearly every summer weekend. I've had one cut out and my father had two cut out and at least one burnt off in the last year. Thus your suggestion seems to bothe the opposite of what I've seen published and personal observation.
So, given that background it really looks to me as if you have just picked an example to lie about to push some sort of political agenda and it pisses me off a great deal because you apear to lying about me and the people around me. Is that the case? Do you have anything to back that statement up or is it just a throwaway lie that you expect to slip past the readers becuase you assume they know as little about the world as yourself?
Seriously... what the hell has this world come to?
They can do anything they want the Goverement is hopeless against them
Clearly they were thinking of the health of the poor IT techs who would otherwise have to set up wireless networks that would cope with 500 little shi^^^^ children all trying to connect to a wireless access point at the same time. Probably with several different devices each. Wires FTW!
Meanwhile, an article I was reading not long before your post (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-14/lack-of-vitamin-d-linked-to-speech-problems/3830212) says the following:
Just another good reason to get rid of all the Catholic Schools in Ontario.
Maybe here?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_absorption_rate
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
There is absolutely not a shred of credible evidence that electromagnetic waves cause any problems.
To top it all, when people complain they are so selective (forget about their cordless phones, whine about WiFi) as to be really amusing.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Calling somebody a liar is not really on.
If one needs to correct somebody you have to learn to do it graciously and without humiliating that person if possible.
Lets say I would explain what was good about the situation and what was wrong about it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There are plenty of Catholics that understand what is reasonable and what isn't about science.
Many of them, very devout, use their heads and thus use contraception for example.
At some point they clearly have decided that god is the only explanation for certain existential key questions, but that , thankfully, doesn't (shouldn't) apply to this particular topic.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No evidence whatsoever about harmful effects has been found.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.