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Texas Schools Using Electronic Chips To Track Students; Parents In Uproar
An anonymous reader writes "Two Schools in San Antonio are using electronic chips to help administrators count and track students' whereabouts. Students at Anson Jones Middle School and John Jay High School are now required to wear ID cards using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology embedded with electronic chips in an effort to daily attendance records. The article said the Northside Independent School District receives about $30 per day in state funding for each student reporting."
The relevant data: did they learn valuable skills?
The irrelevant data: did they attend every class, and take three (3) or fewer dumps a day, numbering fewer than 15 minutes each and not more than 42.3 minutes total?
Our society is in love with metrics, but in its mad dash, produces lots and lots of data that is actually not relevant to the task at hand.
If they said they were using these RFIDs to figure out exactly when and where pedophiles are snatching their kids, I might consider that relevant data, but emphasizing attendance is a surrogate for emphasizing learning.
Tie the RFID chip to a rat, and leave out rat treats on the floor in your favorite classes. You'll get a perfect attendance award.
(Adults are dumb.)
We are entering an era where children are raised more to the standards of "society" (i.e. government) than the parents themselves. My kind -- people who dare to think for themselves and reject coercive authority by default -- aren't wanted or needed in this kind of world. It probably sounds cynical to some people, but I think it's best that my genetic line ends right here. Good luck to the rest of you who continue the human race -- you're going to need it.
..I laud this public school's initiative to make sure that they are tracking attendance. Obviously it's primarily about funding in this case. But it also provides documented evidence of whether kids are in class or not. This information can (and should) be passed on to parents.
Also, in Iowa back in the 1990's our Governor (R) had proposed a change to the state's welfare system called "learnfare". The idea was that a family's welfare check depended on the child's attendance in school. They received 100% of the check for good attendance and were penalized for poor attendance. The idea was that they wanted kids in 3rd, 4th, 5th generations of welfare families to get a good education and not be the next generation on welfare.
Now obviously school attendance doesn't necessarily mean good grades, or caring about your future. But still, it was a step in the right direction.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The problem here is that if your kid's school tracks your kid this way on the school campus, your kid likely won't have a problem being tracked that way all the time when they are an adult. Schools are at least as much about social engineering as they are about education. So, unless your attitude is "I got mine, screw my kids." you should be outraged at a school trying to do this.
As we grow up most of us seem to forget that even as children and teenagers we were still people.
While children don't (and shouldn't) have all the privileges of an adult I still think they still be treated as humans. I think the march towards public schools treating children as product should stop. People keep pointing to corporate, assembly-line like models for education and it just won't work. The more we put dehumanizing elements into the schools the worse education is going to be.
PLUS they know who the mastermind is.
LOL I'd be the guy installing a RFID "fuzzer" that repeats 20 random kids IDs every time my fuzzer detects my frenemy walking thru the cattle gate. Thus my frenemy gets busted. God only knows what he'd do to me to get even after that.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Lets take this to another extreme, Jimmy doesn't want to go to school, so his girlfriend sally who was in all his classes takes his badge with her and places it at his desk and turns in the homework she did for him. When Jimmy's teacher says Jimmy wasn't there, Jimmy points to his RFID and the fact that he turned in his homework. Jimmy's presence is his RFID, and seeing as it isnt embedded in his arm, he can be wherever his girlfriend wants him to be. Now say Jimmy is also in a gang and robs a liquor store while he is "in class", killing to clerk in the process. Jimmy now has an alibi because attendance is determined via RFID (and he turned in his homework).
Disagreeing with you does not make me a troll.
In my fairly rural highschool nearly a decade ago they even had (hidden!) cameras in the bathrooms...