Are the Kids All Right? These School Surveillance Apps Sure Want To Tell You (theoutline.com)

A number of businesses are rushing in to watch everything kids do on their school-issued tech, reports the Outline. From the story: As schools struggle to catch up with the fast-moving online environment, technology can seem like both the cause of and solution to life's problems. Increasingly, schools are turning to high-tech surveillance tools to supervise students online. As Nelson, who has worked in education for 20 years, told The Outline: "There has always been a small proportion of the student body that are going to be jerks or are struggling. With technology, they're able to [do harm] much more quickly and intensely."

[...] Apps like Apple Classroom, DyKnow, and ClassDojo extend these common disciplinary practices into online spaces. Apple Classroom and DyKnow, which bills itself as "classroom-management software for teachers," allow teachers to remotely lock students' computers or tablets into particular apps in order to cut off distractions and the temptation to cheat. These apps also let teachers call up real-time images of students' screens and histories of apps each student has used during class to check who has been following instructions and who was off-task.

Comments

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Iâ(TM)m a big privacy advocate but even so, I can't really get worked up by this. A teacher should have the ability to manage content and focus in the classroom setting.

Re: So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Locking the devices to use a specific app or set of apps is totally fine. If they do that, they don't need to monitor what the kids are doing. And checking if the kids are on task?? That's dumb - either they complete the work and turn it in or they don't. This micromanagement is actually bad for kids. They need to learn values and consequences, not to be bodies in a police state.

Re:So?

[Penguinisto]

Iâ(TM)m a big privacy advocate but even so, I can't really get worked up by this. A teacher should have the ability to manage content and focus in the classroom setting.

As someone who taught CompSci, I agree.

That said, a transparent proxy with a whitelist on it was once more than sufficient (a somewhat modified squid box was pretty much all I needed - if a student wanted access to something outside the whitelist, he/she sent a short internal 'email' with the URL, but that was rarely needed).

Then again, such a solution was sufficient in 1999-2005, even if the student was given unfettered access to the computers within the classroom - after all, desktops were the norm, and nobody took anything home with them. Not really the case today.

I do agree with these further measures above however on two (and only two) conditions:

* That camera/microphone access not be granted under any reason (seriously, kids keep these things in their bedrooms, and there is no valid use case for audio/video access by a competent teacher and/or administrator). A keylogger, screen-share, remote-lock, remote-wipe, app history, and a streaming log of URLs/files accessed (ELK, Splunk, whatever) should be more than plenty, with alerting to any tampering of protected files. (IIRC there was a huge kerfuffle a long while back where some overreaching school district demanded the ability to capture webcam video remotely, even in the students' homes... that died real quick once lawyers got wind of it, and for some massively obvious reasons.)

* No corporate access to any of the data, for any reason. Get your revenue off the licenses, and from nothing else.

Make this known up-front, and require a signed (by the parents) receipt and understanding of a basic EULA stating as much. It is school property, so the legality should be fine in most places (The EU may require a lot of additional precautions, but North America and most of Asia should be no problem.)

Re:So?

[Austerity Empowers]

Iâ(TM)m a big privacy advocate but even so, I can't really get worked up by this. A teacher should have the ability to manage content and focus in the classroom setting.

Barely even matters, there are parents who insist they do so, and who are sue happy. If they think their little Sally was corrupted by some evil that happened at school, and the school had the ability to stop it but did not, it's lawsuit time. "Having the ability" ends up being construed as there exists a SW package with a feature-set that makes the broad claim that it could have stopped X behavior. School did not adopt said package (even if it was completely broken to begin with), thus is culpable.

It's ridiculous in many cases, and I would make the argument that particularly for older kids, they need some freedom to do mildly bad things and experience the consequences (that are hopefully also only mildly bad) unfiltered by supervision, to learn just how horrible life really is on their own. For young kids, consequences are being punished by authority in most cases. The older you get, the more the consequences arise directly from the source and are usually much worse. It's important to learn that while the consequences are not dire, not release a bunch of 18 year old naive brats upon universities or the workforce and watch what happens, that's not good parenting either.

Re:So?

[cayenne8]

...not release a bunch of 18 year old naive brats upon universities or the workforce and watch what happens...

Too late.....unfortunately.

Re:So?

[Alypius]

...experience the consequences (that are hopefully also only mildly bad)

Not a chance. These places have zero-tolerance for anything lest they been seen as liable. Get around a firewall? Welcome to juvie, you little cyber-terrorist.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

I took a year of mechanical drawing and a year of CAD in high school, and I always liked that teacher's computer lab policy. His computers were unencumbered by the schools' security policies and software, and had admin rights (something about the autoCAD license dongle being the reason). Yet he had few to no computer problems, probably the cleanest run lab in the whole school system. The reason? If you messed up one of his computers or he caught you off task you were banned from the computers for 2 weeks - and he didn't care if you had assignments due in that period, you took 0s.

A simple policy and it solves the classroom management problem a lot more elegantly that surveillance software.

Re:So?

[gweihir]

... not release a bunch of 18 year old naive brats upon universities or the workforce and watch what happens, that's not good parenting either.

Too late. Anybody calling for, say, "save spaces" at a university has no business being there in the first place. An adult is expected to be able to fend for himself/herself to some reasonable degree. Those that cannot or are unwilling to are not adults, but children in adult bodies and a huge problem.

Re:So?

[gweihir]

And thereby anybody at least a bit enterprising and at least a bit capable of thinking independently gets filtered out. Without those people, society dies eventually, because the others cannot hack it on their own.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be ok with this but don't forget they could get a better education any endless number of ways and they could get their HS diploma in a few weeks as soon as they're 18.
The most advanced classes I ever had were in 8th and 9th grade. 10 years later I completed a BSCS in 2 years after finally having the stones to subject myself to a classroom. Shocked to discover college is reasonable. No, it wasn't easy.

If their education is bad and there are easier ways to fulfill the requirement on paper: Why the hell don't we fire that whole circus of losers?

Re:So?

[cascadingstylesheet]

If they think their little Sally was corrupted by some evil that happened at school, and the school had the ability to stop it but did not, it's lawsuit time.

On the flip side, if you think that parents in 1960 were willing to let little Sally just wander any red light district in the world, I'd like some of what you are smoking.

The internet has changed everything, for good or for ill.

I am glad that I went to school in the 1980's

[WCMI92]

The most powerful computer then was 16 bit. Most were 8 bit. There weren't these things. My mom didn't get text messages every time I got a grade.

Re:I am glad that I went to school in the 1980's

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad I went to school in the 50S. Most powerful classroom computers were made of bamboo and slid back-and-forth spewing out sines & cosines not behavioral memes. OFCOURSE our 2nd generation Slovak, Italian and Irish teachers knew how to do trig without the study-guide.

Re: I am glad that I went to school in the 1980's

[0ld_d0g]

We're also slaughtering, killing and oppressing fewer and fewer people each passing year.. Coincidence?

Re: I am glad that I went to school in the 1980's

[edris90]

No we aren't. The labeling and publicity focus has changed, but those dynamic s are as prevelent as they have always been

Re:I am glad that I went to school in the 1980's

[Anonymous Coward]

The most powerful computer then was 16 bit.

there were 32 bit computers in 1968

My mom didn't get text messages every time I got a grade.

your mom was not notified of your grades? did you even go to school? my mom had to sign my report card.

Re: I am glad that I went to school in the 1980's

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad I was a foreign exchange student in the 80s. Because USA SUX ASS now just as much as it sucked ass then. AE911Truth Org

Re: I am glad that I went to school in the 1980's

[Anonymous Coward]

Bits is rather meaningless. The Apollo computer was a 16 bit, 2mhz computer that would run circles around anything in the 64bit consumer space today.

Homeschool

[Anonymous Coward]

The public schooling has become a dangerous zoo of indoctrination and tribalism.

This once useful centralisation of resources has become corrupt; it's time to fall back to smaller solutions that are oriented explicitly for a particular community. Homeschool your children, or at least work with other families you trust to homeschool your children together.

There are lots of resources now available with the Internet to give our children an excellent education. There's no need to pay for enormous, gas-guzzling buses to fairy our children in the clutches of leftist indoctrination, the fraud of dumbed down curricula, and the dangers of low-IQ behavior from unruly, poorly raised children.

"Apps" aren't the solution. Instead, be a good, proactive parent. Guide your child into a productive, well-rounded, adulthood with the ability to think critically and independently.

CAPTCHA: banned

Re:Homeschool

[Austerity Empowers]

I imagine your newsletter and website are not making it to the whitelists?

Re:Homeschool

[gweihir]

You have a logical problem there: Being "productive" does not go with "the ability to think critically and independently" in a society that is utterly fucked up and wants nice, little, timid corporate drones as employees.

You can add surveillance to everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't mean you should.

Kids under surveillance are ... not alright

[Anonymous Coward]

They are prisoners. They are not lacking a limb, but something of equal importance for human personality: Their freedom.

It's the opposite of *being alive* (in the metaphorical sense).

Statistically, crime has gone *down*.
Only fear has gone up. On a level that I have to call it a pandemic of mental illness.
We walked to school in the 80s. Or to the bus stop. Everyone. To first class even. (OK, this was central Europe. Don't know about the US.)
So logically, that should still be the case, and parents should be *more* relaxed. They aren't. That is called a delusion. It requires therapy.

Re: Kids under surveillance are ... not alright

[Anonymous Coward]

In the old days, schools were smaller. Not classes: schools. There's an important dimension of human knowability to scale. If a high school has three hundred students, the teachers can know each and every student by sight. If a school has three thousand, no one person can know each student's name, let alone their personality and problems. In the anonymity of large schools, psychological problems fester and and shameless, outrageous behavior goes unchecked when a smaller school's familiarity and genuine community would have stopped it. So, administrators turn large schools into prisons instead of communities, and they turn to surveillance technology to monitor the inmates. A better solution would be to limit the scale of schools to a few hundred students and build more, smaller, cheaper schools in neighborhoods. That will not happen, though, because we've incentivized the growth of schools by focusing on athletics and specialized facilities that are more economical with large student bodies instead of focusing on producing students who feel that they are citizens in a community.

Re: Kids under surveillance are ... not alright

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Smaller cheaper schools add up to cost more money. Scale has advantages and disadvantages. Small independent schools do not have the resources to handle outliers. Public school districts could be much cheaper if they focused on the most normal 90%, and ignored the needs of the students at both the top and bottom of the bell curve like in the Goode Olde Days. If they do not fit in, just ignore them or kick them out.

There are reasons that Gifted children were once categorized under the law as having a learning disability in many states: they literally had lower school success/graduation rates than kids with average IQs in the school systems as they existed.

Re:Kids under surveillance are ... not alright

[gweihir]

On a level that I have to call it a pandemic of mental illness.

Oh, yes. People that do not grow up and never have learned how to get their fear under control. It does not get more dangerous and destructive than that.

Re: Kids under surveillance are ... not alright

[fafalone]

Any but the very most sparsely populated areas have schools big enough to handle all but the wildest extremes (unable to independently function at all or should be years ahead of even the class for the top 10%). But that's now becoming forbidden, because apparently, the solution to the racial disparity in the gifted class and the slow class isn't to have a hard look at why the situation exists in the first place, it's to chalk it up to racism, put the 150 IQ students in the same math class as the 50 IQ students, and call it equality while nobody learns anything. "Tracking" joins the endless list of color blind merit based systems that are now "racist" because no one is willing to address the underlying issues (or recognizes they're generational and can't be fixed in time to score the political credit, while 'everyone is equal in shittiness' will get them credit).

Re: Kids under surveillance are ... not alright

[Anonymous Coward]

With more, smaller schools they could specialize more.

You don't have to have every school maintain a gifted and a special needs program for the 1/100 student that needs one if you instead have 2/100 schools dedicate half their resources to one.

The real problem with more and smaller schools is maintaining teacher quality. as there is a shortage of competent teachers willing to work for the level of pay we give teachers.

Re: Kids under surveillance are ... not alright

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Any but the very most sparsely populated areas have schools big enough to handle all but the wildest extremes

You know this how? I have talked to parents of children with special needs, and it is very common for them to put them on a long bus ride to that one special school in the district to find teachers with the appropriate training, and these are reasonable wealthy suburban districts. So those schools that look "big enough" to you do not have the resources you think they do. Perhaps they could, if only we stopped pretending that they have too much money.

The very idea of merit is eroding under pressure from all across the political spectrum and social spectrum. Real Gifted programs for genuine talent was teetering on its last legs 40 years ago. Now everyone considered "college bound" is swept into the same pool, and college prep track classes is the only accommodation for Giftedness, no matter how much that is holding some students back.

Once it has been decided on the basis of political convenience that the clean cut kid with 110 IQ and rich parents who hire tutors is an appropriate peer for the 150 IQ kid in his or her mental wheelhouse academic subject, we have given up on the idea of merit already. Who is to say 105 IQ is too low? 95? This is a game about race/class, and it always was -- we just did not bother to notice when only white people played the game. Now that brown people want to play the same game by the already established rules, who is to say they are wrong? We gave up on taking merit seriously long ago!

pls - fast-moving online environment ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet is not fast moving, stop providing marketing momentum to technology gadget sellers and web sites.

The internet is near middle age, some changes here and there, some new sites and tools; though nothing really fast moving.

Reading dozens of future technology magazines would give you the impression that dramatic changes are happening every month also.

Then you lack the experience and imagination.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you simply don't like to think.

Sorry, but ignorance of reality (aka experience with these matters), is not a justification.
And ignorance of basic common sense about privacy and freedom, that was normal until this new mindset got pushed on everyone until you think it's normal and no need to blink, is even less of a justification.

Re:Then you lack the experience and imagination.

[cayenne8]

I am SOOOOO glad I grew up in the days before cell phones and cameras everywhere.

I would not have had as much fun or experienced so much as a kid growing up if I"d been surveyed constantly like they are today.

Hell, if I were raised like they are today, I guess I"d have been taken away from my parents by protective services (I did play and run all over neighborhoods un-supervised for most any given day).....and likely my antics would have landed me likely on some terrorist watch list.

That and when I sit around with old friends, we trade stories of mischief we got into....thankfully no photo documentation of it to haunt our adult lives, but we do all remember and laugh about it over drinks from time to time.

I'll definitely trade my independence and ability to run all over the place unsupervised, and to spend genuine time in meatspace with friends I am still close with over these past decades, over the higher tech today....where you see kids on a date out heads bent over phones rather than interacting with each other, getting to know each other, etc.

Sure, growing up as I did...I failed, I fucked up...I got caught occasionally, but I lived and learned through it.

ON the other hand, I did have a film camera back in the day, and when it was out....I did make sure to keep all the negatives, if by chance anyone I grew up with becomes a senator or runs for president...so that I can a good job/compensation for keeping said negatives private.

;)

Re:Then you lack the experience and imagination.

[SirAstral]

This is the natural result of a fear driven society. We are so risk adverse that we are steadily introducing and inviting more and more tyranny... and everyone knows that leads to misery, suffering, and conflict.

All, just to keep you safe!

Re:Then you lack the experience and imagination.

[Anonymous Coward]

"With technology, they're able to [do harm] much more quickly and intensely."
What? Whack 'em with a keyboard? A mouse-wire garrote maybe? Never happened to ME in school.

Re:Then you lack the experience and imagination.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the natural result of a fear driven society. We are so risk adverse that we are steadily introducing and inviting more and more tyranny... and everyone knows that leads to misery, suffering, and conflict.

All, just to keep you safe!

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
- Yoda

Automation in schools

[Anonymous Coward]

Teachers are using online sites, tools to automate away lots of the work they do.

- Math practice questions are now a web site with dynamically generated problems and computer checked answers, Teacher does not need to grade anything.
- Vocabulary practice questions, antonyms, synonyms, pick the best work for a sentence, use the right verb tense, etc are online on a web site with computer checked answers. Teacher does not need to grade anything.
- Textbooks are now just paper and electronic based workbooks where you work it on paper then answer it online. Teacher does not need to grade anything.
- Testing follows the same pattern.
- Watch a video on Topic X for just about anything in K-12 education is online.
- Papers, tests, work sheets all done on Google docs
- PDF format assignments given out for the kids to print out at home and work and then turn in. Teachers don't even have to print empty assignments and hand them out.
- Lesson plans, sample tests, study guides, lecture notes and slides are now available online for small cost. Teachers need to do almost none of the lesson plan creation needed a few years ago.

Tech in the classroom is very little about helping Kids, it's about reducing the amount of work a teacher needs to do and very much reducing the education quality my children receive.

I do expect my kids to have classes which have no teacher and are entirely electronic based. That's not what I pay school taxes for. If it is that case, then K-12 education can be done all at home without the need for school builds, teachers, administrators, cafeteria workers, drivers, janitors, etc.

Does that mean we can get a 50% headcount reduction of the public school employees?

A bit of salt, seeing my kids turn computer based school assignments into video game substitutes.

Very bad idea

[gweihir]

They will soon learn that they are under surveillance, and that will have the usual effects: Stress, mental illness, lowered motivation and, in some, a far improved skill for deception. These would be the ones the article calls "jerks" or :struggeling". Pretty much all things you very much do not want to do to your kids. Child-abuse on or above the level of the anti-vaxxers.

On the plus side, this is the perfect preparation for life in the upcoming surveillance-fascism, so it may be a good idea after all...

Re:Very bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Upcoming surveillance? Where do you live? If kids accept the chilling effects of surveillance as the norm and helpful during their formative years, they will be less likely to act out later in life.

Re: Very bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

We live in the Surveillance Age and so do those kids. Their kids and their grandkids will, too. Knowing how and when to exercise self-censorship and how to conform are now essential survival skills. One misstep can have dire consequences. They sooner they learn how to live under the Panopticon, the better.

Re:Very bad idea

[gweihir]

You seem to be functionally illiterate. Don't worry, it is quite common these days. Here is some more explanation for special-needs readers such as you: I wrote "surveillance-fascism", you wrote "surveillance". These are not the same thing, as can be seen easily by the first one being two words and the second one just being one. I trust you can count to two? Now, on the subject, the US is clearly already a surveillance state, it is not yet fascism, although there is, among others, a "stable genius" hard at work to make that future a reality. Not that any true fascist would want to have anything to do with that second-rate used-car salesman type.

Also, you seem to have completely overlooked the negative effects of living under surveillance, possibly because you are in denial. Don't worry about it either this is very common among stupid people and being stupid, you are safely part of the majority of people.

Who THE Fuck Are You?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm? Who are you?

The kids Aren't Alright

[Anonymous Coward]

When we were young the future was so bright
The old neighborhood was so alive
And every kid on the whole damn street
Was gonna make it big and not be beat

Now the neighborhood's cracked and torn
The kids are grown up but their lives are worn
How can one little street
Swallow so many lives

Yes, The Kids are All Right

[93 Escort Wagon]

I Can't Explain, but after riding The Magic Bus I Can See for Miles - all the way to Baba O'Riley's. It's made me one Happy Jack - maybe I'm on my way to becoming a Pinball Wizard!

Re:Yes, The Kids are All Right

[sysrammer]

Who are you?

Re: That's becaue they are all pedophiles

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all of them

Depends what you do about it

[Solandri]

So if your surveillance detects that some kid has managed to hack their device so they can use it to watch movies in class without it triggering any alarms, but oddly their grades have not fallen, do you:

• A. Suspend the kid and call in the cops because you suspect he hacked his grades.
• or B. Send him to a different class teaching advanced computer science since he's clearly got talent for something outside the regular school curriculum.

That is, are you trying to create an educational program which generates cookie-cutter kids, even if it means pounding square kids into round holes to force them to become round? Or is your educational program designed to allow each kid to explore, discover, and improve their unique talents and abilities? Is the surveillance for the benefit of the state (making life easier for teachers and administrators), or for the benefit of the students (expanding their future job opportunities)?

Re:Depends what you do about it

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot C. Medicate the crap out of the "disruptor" until they become violent psychopaths shortly before graduation. Then use the tragedy to fuel your political agenda(s) to make schools even more efficient prisons and indoctrination camps.

Haven't tried yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'll start newsletter or website.

When do they learn personal responsibility then?

[gettin2old]

Part of that education used to be preparing you for college and a job where no one is going to hold your hand to get your work done. They shouldn't be watching over them and making sure they do what they are supposed to. That's the student's responsibility.

High Schools are graduating failures. If not failures in High School, then failures in College and the workforce. It would be so much better to prepare students for life. If they are going to fail in College let them find out before College and tens of thousands of dollars of debt.

Prepare them for the corporate world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where they'll also be spied upon.

Can't we have some decent privacy rules where schools and employers aren't allowed to spy on people outside of school/work?

Years ago the corporate entity at my work decided they'd only pay for my cell phone service if I installed some app on MY phone. I think they even included some clause so they could take my phone number, which pre-dated my working for this company by almost 10 years. I politely refused and stopped submitting reimbursement for my cell phone bill.

That wasn't a big deal, but it occurs to me that employers and schools are often playing this same role as trying to watch everyone and limit things they don't like. That same employer blocked certain websites. Not completely mind you, I jumped their dumb fence whenever my work demanded it. At one point they actually blocked a site that gave me information on a bug that potentially affected servers I managed. IIRC it was heartbleed.

Creepy as fuck

[Rick Schumann]

For fuck's sake if you think kids are abusing their smartphones in class then just take them away or institute a policy whereby they're only allowed to have basic dumbphones with them at school, you don't start treating them like they're convicts in prison. Trust and respect work both ways. If you continually tell a kid he (or she) is bad, eventually they will believe it themselves and act accordingly -- creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Same thing happens by the way with minorities: if you tell a black kid and treat him like he's 'bad' his entire life, eventually he's going to give up and be bad because he'll see he just can't win. Kids of any background will react the same way. If you think you have to resort to the equivalent of putting a GPS ankle monitor on a kid then I say you're the one who screwed up, not the kid.

Re:Creepy as fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just phones.

Current classrooms assign tablets or even chromebooks to students, and if those machines aren't locked down some kids will sometimes use them as distraction devices instead of devices to get work done. Now, I won't get into how super creepified it is that we've institutionalized handing Google our kid's credentials as a matter of course to make life simpler for school IT departments. What I will discuss is how we're continually pushing further and further into making the machines do all the heavy lifting in anything that might be difficult to do correctly, like teach our children how to behave like civilized beings instead of easily led little cattle or abusive assholes when they don't get their way. That's a difficult job to do the right way, so we choose the wrong way and then wonder why we're getting ever more ridiculous societal problems.

On the bright side, we're raising a new generation of kids to believe that they need to say inside the ever tightening lines if they want to get by, so they'll be ready for the complete and utter destruction of our few remaining freedoms by the time they're adults. HOORAY!

Re:Creepy as fuck

[Rick Schumann]

Blame so-called 'social media' for kids not being socialized properly, it just gives them an excuse to NOT be actually-social with their peers, so they don't develop proper social skills -- and they don't get censured for behaving badly.

So far as machine conveniences doing too many things for us, I agree. Remember Wall-E? That's where we're heading, having people be dumb, dumb, dumb, because they don't have to really learn to do anything themselves, there's always some machine or software to do it for them. Get a few generations of that, and you have a populace who can't even take care of themselves in basic ways without all the high-tech help. Not good.

"Sharing is normal!". "Privacy is for people who have things to hide!". That's what so-called 'social media' has been indoctrinating people to be like. Dangerously bad.

Re:Creepy as fuck

[gweihir]

Trust and respect work both ways.

This is a thing authoritarians do not understand. They think they can _demand_ respect, just because it is _obviously_ them that keep society from collapsing. In actual reality, things are the other way round and anything were authoritarians have taken over has eventually collapsed. It is a stage in any power in decline.

Re:Creepy as fuck

[fafalone]

It's not just having access to the devices. It's the access to devices combined with a complete lack of access to unsupervised free play. Kids aren't allowed to go outside, find friends, and do things around the neighborhood often well into their teens. The freedom most of us had by 6-10, kids don't now experience until mid teens and sometimes not til college. They're doing scheduled activities all day every day and never allowed more than a few feet from adults who will step in to solve any problem they have. It's become so universal that it's even become ingrained in law; even parents who want to give them that freedom can't, because now any kid outside without an adult can quickly become a police and child services issue.
Social media is *a* factor, but what do you expect when all real socialization is scheduled and supervised?

Re:Creepy as fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

The Schools when they prevent kids from having smart phone or any phone that has other impacts that the Schools have to deal with. Many parents will demand that their kid have a phone (helicopter parents) and some teachers find they are useful and other will want them band it causes lots of headaches.

TRANSLATION (IMHO)!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Your EVIL GOVERNMENT's EVIL SCHOOLS spying on your children & trying to catch innocent bad students!!! They are trying to turn bad students to good students!!! How dare they??? Let bullies be bullies!!! Let slackers be slackers!!! Let innocent bad students destroy evil good students!!! Protest & stop your EVIL SCHOOLS!!! Help us anti-government aka anarchists to turn all future generations to criminals!!! Help us protect innocent criminals from EVIL GOVERNMENT!!! PS: Always wear thinfoil hats because EVIL GOVERNMENT trying read/control your mind!!!"

The Next Adam Lanza Laughs

[Anonymous Coward]

Those APPS will totally stop bullets!

Bigly what a shithole country the USA has become since 1969.

Re: Explain Canada.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right next door to USA, has gun & immigrant problems because of the USA's refusal to take responsibility for their side of the border but while having 10% of your popluation has less than 1% of your gun crime.

EXPLAIN.

Firewall much?

[BringsApples]

At the school: Firewall
On the devices: a really nice looooong hosts file.

As an old fart ...

[Big Bipper]

who was schooled in the 60s, and who doesn't have children of his own, I have to say that that I thank God that I'm not growing up or have kids today. My neighbours had their young grand kids ( 5 and 7 ) to stay for a month on their farm last summer and I was appalled by the stories they told of how parents are forced to raise their children now. They had to teach their grand kids that it was OK ( at the farm ) to just go outside and play in the yard or field whenever they wanted to, without having to ask for permission first. At home, if they were found alone in the park across the street from their home ( even though their mother could see them from her kitchen window ), the police would be called. Kids today are not being taught how to live in a real world, instead they are just being conditioned to live as obedient serfs and not think for themselves. If TPTB ( banksters, elites, globalists, whatever you call them ) haven't bought-stolen everything by the time today's kids reach adulthood, they can just sit back and tell their serfs to give the rest to them :-( .

Re:As an old fart ...

[gweihir]

Fully agree. The only thing these rules about not being allowed to do anything by yourself, is creating little obedient serfs.

the banks want it that way k-12 student loans!!

[Joe_Dragon]

the banks want it that way k-12 student loans!! that can't be discharged in bankruptcy.

Re: That's becaue they are all pedophiles

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. Some school administrators are the sort of puritan whackjobs who would cut off their own dick and flagellate themselves with an extension cord for having impure thoughts about their own wives.

Government makes student loans non-dischargeable

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is that the law made by government, but the government inflates the costs of attending University by pumping in taxpayer money as well as by pushing a higher degree for people who have no business wasting 4 years of their life at one of these institutions.

You say "banks", but you're not right. You mean "government"; a leftist government wants whole generations of people to be poor, dependent, and poorly educated.

There's the other shoe

[drew_kime]

I guess just tracking the ones charged with a crime wasn't enough.

Giving them more of what made them sick

[jenningsthecat]

Forced from an early age to follow somebody else's idea of a schedule. Taken away from their families for many hours a day. Not allowed to pursue the things that truly interest and excite them. Forced to learn things which they're not interested in. Taught that knowledge is acquired by being stuffed full of it and then regurgitating it, as opposed to living and learning organically in the real world in real situations. Encouraged to believe that learning is hard, and that there is only one right way and only one approved opportunity to study any given subject or discipline. Actively prevented from learning what they might learn easily and enthusiastically, because 'that's not what we're studying right now'. Discouraged from being individuals, from being 'different'. In some cases, all of this pounding of square pegs into the approved round holes results in "jerks or (those who) are struggling". In other cases it results 'merely' in people who fall far short of the potential they were born with. So what's the proposal for 'fixing' these students? Why, of course, the answer must be more monitoring, more hand-holding, more theft of their autonomy, more invasion in their lives - still more prescription, and still more proscription. Do educators and authorities really not get that doing the same shit over and over again and expecting a different result is a symptom of insanity?

I suspect public schooling damages children neurologically. There's a lot of talk about how people's brains don't really mature until they're in their twenties, yet there have been more than a few examples throughout history of people in their early teens starting successful companies, commanding troops in battle and winning, and so forth. What if the public schools' lack of real-world engagement and experience and autonomy starves young brains of the stimulation that would, via neuro-plasticity, mature those brains much sooner? What if the constant thwarting of their every impulse and inclination dulls children and pre-disposes them to apathy and/or anger and/or despair? Just to be clear - yes, I AM theorizing that school might cause brain damage. I'm fairly certain that in many people it causes soul damage. It did in my case.

Anybody who is disgusted and saddened by the Orwellian interventions described in TFA really should read John Taylor Gatto's 'Underground History of American Education'. It totally changed my view of both the efficacy and the purpose of public education as it has been practised during the last century. The book is out of print, but is available in PDF as a free download - check it out via your favourite search engine.

Re: That's becaue they are all pedophiles

[gweihir]

Naa, god is an illusion of your own creation, and his main occupation is fucking your mind. As an atheist, I do not have that. Feels nice.

Bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

"allow teachers to remotely lock students' computers or tablets"

Would not this be illegal? If some scrotum-licker decided to fuck about with MY computer or tablet, I would lodge a complaint and see them locked away for the rest of their natural lives for "hacking".

Or do they mean "allow teachers to remotely lock computers or tables" (not owned by the students' but being used by them and over which the teachers have been granted administrative authority by the owner)"

??

Extremely short sighted

[WolfgangVL]

We've handed 100% of our children's k-12 performance data over to google, and 100% of our children's web surfing habits to various surveillance companies.

The real rub being that in an effort to appease the think of the children crowd Google has promised not to advertise to the students 'on this device'. The between the lines on this being that the student's profile follows him to any other computer system he signs in on.

Everything about the arrangement of chromebooks (or i-books, or whatever the local flavor may be) in the classroom is a life-long privacy nightmare for an entire generation of Americans, and nobody even seems to care.

One of the biggest most powerful data brokers the world has ever known will now know exactly how well an entire generation scored on every academic test/project/assignment they ever took. This is the tradeoff our public school system has made in our names, in a bid for convenience on the teachers part.

Last year, I tried as hard as I could to gain an exemption for my student against use the school issued chromebooks, we are happy to use our own device, and the entire student facing suite of tools is a web-portal that can be accessed by any device. Nobody had even considered a parent would not want their student to use them, and eventually I was told I can revoke my permission to use the device, which will doom my child to not being able to use IT systems in class at all. It was clear to me in the 3 months I worked this that none of the school officials had even read the user agreement or privacy policy that comes along with these devices.

This year I already knew how unorganized and uninformed my local school was regarding this technology, so I just told my student to tell them he had an exemption on the first day. It stuck. He still carries and charges the chromebook for specific test and such, but he is now in charge of his own device, and is learning the value of his personal data, how to be responsible and safe online, and how to take steps to limit the baked-in surveillance of the modern web. He knows this is a privilege, and he knows any abuse of this arrangement will end it. We got lucky, but my point is that it's still possible to take back control.

At a minimum, these devices should come with mandatory privacy training, and it needs to be clear to the student what data is being archived by what companies.

https://www.eff.org/wp/school-...
https://www.eff.org/document/f...
https://arstechnica.com/inform...
https://appleinsider.com/artic...

The situation is all the way bananas, and nobody seems to care.

Re:Extremely short sighted

[Anonymous Coward]

I cared for years in the school system but very few others care. Actually the few people that do care are neanderthal computer users that hate most technology sadly they cant make very good arguments on the tech side of things and the push for new new buy me gadgets and services is way out of control and some of the laws pander to the make the schools hand over the data and services as they don't wont the liability or the man power. The laws get taken way of out of context and school districts get scared that they have to monitor when the student is home or at school and the training is lacking as the student logs into any computer they use and leaks tons of private data that say a parent uses or a teacher when they don't know what they are doing.

European children visiting US

[kaur]

I am sending my 11 year old over from Europe to US for a robotics competition (Vex IQ). They will be accompanied by a teacher.

Biggest part of "training" is telling them what is disallowed in the US.
Do not be alone, ever. In the mall, on the streets, in the airport, anywhere.
At home the 11 year olds roam the town alone. They go to school or gym, they visit friends, use public transport - all alone. They know their way around and there is no crime to be afraid of.
In US, which is as safe a country as any European one, they cannot and must not.

The kids take those rules with disbelievement and some amusement. "Imagine if someone would call a police if I walked to school." But they are smart boyd and I am sure they will behave as told.

Just...
why???

Re:European children visiting US

[WolfgangVL]

City living busybodies make that a reality.

Rural areas not so much.

Try to make time to get out of the city while you're here. It really is a night and day difference.

Re: Explain Canada.

[Anonymous Coward]

We are sorry about Obama selling your people guns. We did an investigation but I they clearly weren't held accountable. We even lost a white person because of it.

Other than the friends part....

[Anonymous Coward]

All of whom I haven't seen in 20+ years now (I still live in the same house! But not a single person has come for a visit or even called when we still had the original landline number!)

Honestly, most of the people from my town either became social media whores, went crazy, committed suicide, or became political assholes tied to one of the big parties. I didn't end up with a gossip circle myself, but my female relatives have maintained one spanning generations that seems to find details about people I haven't known in 20+ years.

Are the kids alright at school? NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Socialists and Communists have long since taken over education, and instead of teaching, they're propagandizing and misleading with disinformation and half truths. The last bastion of safety, which they're actively trying to dismantle, is and should be the home.

Do you REALLY want the kids to be alright? Home school them! Not your local school district's "home education" package but an honest-to-goodness home school program. But don't take my word for it, research it yourselves. Your children will be better educated, better adjusted, more self motivated ... and you'll effectively remove the government from your children's miseducation.