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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."
Just saying.
Really... parents caring about what the school does? Unheard of.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Hey, why not just embed the RFID tags in them subdermally, in their ear, like cattle? There must be a fair bit of expertise for that sort of thing in Texas.
In other news, the last kid in John Jay High School to figure out they could just leave their ID card in their locker and stay in bed all day was mercilessly mocked and bullied by his peers.
I guess I should RTFA, but:
I don't know what that means...
Somewhere in this school there's an Honor Roll student with a couple of dozen ID tags hanging around his neck and a wallet full of cash...
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.)
Somehow I think the students have turned in the product and are no longer the consumer in this case.
Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"
This doesn't seem unreasonable does it? When the kids are at school, the staff are in loco parentis, and so keeping tabs on the little bastards doesn't sound crazy. After all if one of them goes AWOL and turns up in a suitcase, the school's likely to be sued.
Of course if it's being used for data collection for behavioural profiling or resale, that's another matter, but if it's just for "this kid was here earlier but didn't answer roll call, where the hell is he?" or "it's recess and we need to get a message to this kid, where the hell is he?" that seems fine.
Steve Hernandez, whose daughter is a sophomore, objects to the tags, saying they are similar to the "mark of the beast."
"My daughter should not have to compromise (her) religion just because Northside Independent School District wants to get paid," Hernandez said.
are used in their parents badges when they go to work. Its how they open doors and clock in. Recalling from my youth, kids have had ID badges since about 1996, theyve had to be visually verified in most cases before you can leave the lobby and enter your class at the start of the day. somehow the texan that wrote this article thinks by saying "electronic chips" and "children" in the same sentence, im supposed to get outraged.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Let's see here... You don't use capitalization and make use of sentence fragments. Sure, I'll believe that your teachers didn't care!
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.
Me and my co-workers have RFID-enabled badges to access our workplace and PCs, and it leaves logging trails for sure. No-one around here seems to be in an uproar about it.
Of course, here they have proprietary company property to protect.
There's more than one person that's supposed to be keeping track of those 1200 students.
I'd reckon probably about 450 people. (Class size of 30, 50 misc people, administrators, campus watch people, etc).
Besides. You stick all those 1200 people in a building, with maybe a dozen entrances/exits, so you don't need to watch each of them individually all the time.
This is how surveillance states gain ground in leaps and bounds over generations. Kids that are GPS tracked by their parents get used to being GPS tracked by authority and as adults, don't mind it or are less likely to *actually* fight it from a state/national authority. Same logic here, with RFID chip tracking.
..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
Kids will never think of having a friend hold their card while they go off to do whatever it is kids do nowdays.
I'm sure a creepy school employee would love to know exactly when they can find your kids all alone. I don't understand why you don't have a problem with your kids being tracked, when you wouldn't like the same system for yourself. Also, if a parent is so worried about their children going missing then they can have their kid wear a tracking device that will track them off school grounds and actually be useful for finding them.
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.
Capitals are the oppressors of the lower case. The lOWER cASE has as much rights as the Capital Case.
What his teachers tought him is that all are characters are equal! What you are trying to say is that some characters are more equal than others. Shame on you.
How hard is it to manually count attendance? You have a degree in education but you cannot to the occasional headcount? After a week you should be able to look at your class and recall the *names* of the faces you do not see and deduct that from your total class size. Don't get me wrong, I love technology, but this sounds like another excuse to spend taxpayer money, in addition to other nefarious motives which will undoubtedly be discussed in this thread.
Take ID card, wrap it in a towel, and set it on concrete, liberally beat it with a hammer.
From experience, it breaks the RFID chip and makes it stop working but leaves the card intact. Personally I hate these stupid chips and I have broken a bunch of them!
This is how surveillance states gain ground in leaps and bounds over generations. Kids that are GPS tracked by their parents get used to being GPS tracked by authority and as adults, don't mind it or are less likely to *actually* fight it from a state/national authority. Same logic here, with RFID chip tracking.
I don't think it will take that long. Tomorrow, some other parent will sue some other school district for their kid being kidnapped because the school should have known kidnappers were out there and done GPS-tracking preemptively.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
This was the most important line in the article:
"The article said the Northside Independent School District receives about $30 per day in state funding for each student reporting."
This is the only reason anything gets done at a public school EVER.
As an Indiana student from the *1980s* (to '91) it was often drummed into us (even as students) that funding levels were dependent on attendance and absentee levels.
As crazy as administrators and politicians have gotten since then about metrics I'm sure it is ten times worse by now....
I'm stupid why? Because I understand that there is a (huge) difference between Electronic tracking of every movement throughout the day vs pen and paper attendance taking? Excuse me for pointing out the flaw in your logic
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.
You must be a ball at parties...
"Why would I want to play a game that encourages me (and others!) to work out the best way to weaken the structure of a tower, leading to its inevitable collapse? The insanity! When we leave here, someone is probably going to go knock down some buildings on the way home, seeing as how we were all conditioned to believe its normal..."
Just play some fucking Jenga, and get yourself off the slippery slope. Not everyone careens helplessly down it.
I would have fought this authority as a teenager. Now I'm sitting in a cubicle with an RFID tag around my neck.
:wq
in Germany, we worry about educating the children, if they don't want to be there then so be it. We also train children to be more independent.
Examples with photos!
I do not know why so many refer to government as if it is this independent god-like entity running around and maniacally laughing as it forces people to do things against their will.
The government *is* the parents. I went to public high school, and went to a district that mandated school uniforms. This wasn't big government forcing it on me; it was my parents' contemporaries. I remember my parents asking at meetings why we needed uniforms (took out individuality, and was expensive!), but many other parents -- not the government -- responded they liked how clean everyone looked, and it kept gang paraphenalia out of schools. Hell, I knew *students* that claimed to enjoy having uniforms because they did not like having to think about what to wear every day.
My point is, do not blame government -- blame the parents. The parents are the ones pushing the standards, and government officials are trying their best (often times anyway) to appease what they think is the majority opinion. My school district holds votes on certain school policies, and it was what parents wanted.
If you are upset about rejecting authority, you should ask why so many parents are so authoritarian toward their own and other children. It is apparently what they want. Personally, I feel this is a phase because of fear of the future in the current economic and foreign policy climate. The youth are not near as accepting as you think. Growing up in this era has given them much different attitudes than their authoritarian parents. They are biding their time until they know for sure how to go about changing it. I would be a little more optimistic.
Flamebait? Please go re-read TFA, but substitute "inmate" for "student" and see if it still tracks.
About a year ago, our local parents got their collective panties in a bunch because the same company that provides food to the local prisons also supplies food to the local public schools. The "uproar" part came about because the prisoners' food was better than that delivered to the children. The prisoners had advocates for their diets, where the school administrators were more concerned with budget issues.
When the school administration is motivated by "$30 per inmate per day," they're going to enact policies that bias toward tracking attendance rather than policies that bias toward education. Why not just mark all students as "attending?" I'm sure that's been tried, and the State will have auditors to prevent abuse - hence the desire to have some method for demonstrating the attendee's presence. This is definitely a Camel's Nose issue, as once the tracking system is in place, the administrators will find other uses for it.
I hope there is one of those Pinko-Liberal-Commie-Democrat-Basterds teachers on the faculty making the kids read 1984 and Fahrenheit 451.
And who says English Lit is worthless.
When I was young, I thought Fahrenheit 451 was about suppressing books because government was authoritarian.
I read it more recently and realized it was because the people had democratically decided that books were unhealthy and interfered with watching Dancing with the Stars.
Is the bathroom one of those areas? How about the break room, the water cooler, and your cubicle?
That is the difference between a simple time and attendance system and an Orwellian tracking system.
I wish people like you would leave the country.. or at least go live in a socialist country for awhile and see if you like that worthless sardine can lifestyle.
1. Tracking performance negates the need to track attendance.
2. It's just as likely that repressive, overcontrolling environments with extremely passive-aggressive authority structures are what CAUSE school shootings. The amount of pressure in schools grows every day, and most of it is artificially imposed.
3. Over litigiousness is the root problem here. It affects more than just schools. Maybe the answer is for society in general to roll this back and force people to fucking deal with the realities of life instead of constantly searching for a scapegoat, even at the expense of rational cause-effect and reasonable recompense.
4. Logical progression doesn't justify anything. It's a predictor. This is the same shitty argument used in law concerning 'precedent.' It's a fallacy when used to justify more of the same kind of action. It's a form of circular reasoning.
5. People aren't necessarily ignorant. They're just not machines meant to fit the cogs of your 'Great Society.'
6. define 'bad things' please. This is the 'if you've got nothing to hide' argument. The problem isn't whether people do 'bad things', it's what authority deems 'bad' and how unchecked they are in enforcing whims. During my years in the public system, faculty abused their privileges and power all the time. why would someone pay attention and abuse? BECAUSE THEY CAN! It's an axiomatic component of human nature I guess: unchecked power corrupts. The last thing I'd want is to give this mindset even more control over my location or any personal data. If the goal is to educate, then track performance, and don't worry quite so much about attendance. Of course, if the goal is to get kids used to this kind of shithole society, then by all means...
7. yeah I know. People need to fucking realize that with life, shit happens, and sometimes there's no one person to blame. Unfortunately, it seems like you're the one following the 'zomg terrorist' bandwagon, or at least using the word to label people you don't agree with so you don't have to listen to them. Since most people who side with tyrannical authority are often extremely timid and insecure, I wonder if that's not the case with you.
A college (for 16-18 year olds) that one of my friends attended had a simpler version of this system -- student cards had to be swiped into a reader to show attendance. The teachers didn't care much about the system -- they're teaching adults, so there were fewer in loco parentis responsibilities, and the "adults" are supposed to want to be there...
My friend made good money for a while, swiping people's cards for them. At the time, the government paid 16-18 year olds from poor families to go to school once they were 16 (i.e. once school was optional), so for some students it was well worth faking attendance.
That's why it *is* important for parents of today...to be against this type of tracking....if kids today think this is normal...well, it then becomes the norm.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........