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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.'"
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
Probably the same reason the word 'nuclear' (as in nucleus') has been dropped from 'MRI'.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Why not?
Because it is pandering to a false belief (that wifi harms people), and its one that *has* been thoroughly researched, unlike what was stated in the article and summary.
It is a dangerous thing to fold and let this pass, because irrational opponents to radio waves will point to this case to further their fear-based opposition.
You cant just let them win because its "too hard" fighting irrational beliefs, you have to educate people about the facts so they are not afraid of things they don't understand properly. You have to show everyone that these people are wrong, why they are wrong, and why it is a bad thing to allow such wrongness to win.
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.
Exactly. They have hire people to carry those data-packets around.
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
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.