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Ontario Teachers' Union Calls For Health-Related Classroom Wi-Fi Ban

Posted by Soulskill on from the frying-their-developing-brains dept.

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.'"

13 of 365 comments (clear)

  1. Call your union rep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    On your cellphone

    1. Re:Call your union rep by Anomalyst · · Score: 5, Funny

      Its been my experience that educators are the hardest to educate. It amazes me that they manage to dress themselves in the morning.

      --
      There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
    2. Re:Call your union rep by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 5, Funny

      I've never seen a Catholic wearing a tinfoil hat. Can you provide evidence for this claim?

      Whoa! Really? Never seen the pope? Why do you think that friggin' hat is so big, anyway? Yep, totally lined with tin-foil.

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    3. Re:Call your union rep by LordLimecat · · Score: 5, Funny

      Aluminum isnt harmless either. You think its safe to drink from that coke can, but what if it was 5*10^32 kg and exerted a sufficient gravity field to crush your body?

    4. Re:Call your union rep by micheas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What's next? Banning windows and outdoor recess? Both of those activities subject students to far greater EMF Radiation from the fusion reaction commonly referred to as "the sun" Further more "Cover up" campaigns in Australia aimed at lowering skin cancer rates showed an increase in vitamin D related conditions that far outweighed any health benefits from the campaign.

      This is all over the fact that the cancer rates around high voltage power lines in Colorado in the late 60s and early 70s were far above what would be expected. The moral of that was that maybe you should check if the power company is using agent orange for weed control (they were) before you look like an ass, and create a bunch of junk science about the dangers of EMF radiation.

      There have been hundreds of studies about EMF and none of the studies without major flaws have shown any correlation between EMF radiation and cancer, or any other disease.

      In the 70s and 80s your comments made sense, now it just makes you look stupid and causes people to be dismissive of your overall agenda, which would be good, if you were not chasing something that people instinctively know is wrong.

      --
      Work bio at MMWD
  2. Remove all 2.4 GHz emitting devices by DeadSeaTrolls · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:Remove all 2.4 GHz emitting devices by MDMurphy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It doesn't matter if chalk dust causes lung problems, it appears to be enough if the 'safety of this technology has not thoroughly been researched'. The health effects of WiFi signals has more likely been much more heavily researched than graphite dust from pencils, dry-erase marker dust or the liquid that evaporates from them. For that matter any additional un-tested off-brand pens and markers brought in from students.

      I like the comments above from others. If the union is successful then also absolutely prohibit any teacher from bringing a mobile phone on to campus. Remove microwave ovens from the schools as well. If a 600mw WiFi radio on a ceiling is thought to be dangerous, then a powered up phone in a closed metal vehicle should be viewed as reckless. In keeping with standard school policies, a teacher with a powered on mobile phone anywhere on campus, including their cars, be subject to a zero-tolerance policy and result in immediate termination.

  3. Not thoroughly researched? That's precious. by jaskelling · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Not thoroughly researched? That's precious. by Lev13than · · Score: 5, Informative

      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
  4. Two stories by vlm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  5. The "Precautionary Principle" by JSBiff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  6. It has been researched actually by Karmashock · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  7. Re:more union cable pullers by skids · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.