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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.
[...] 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.
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.
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.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
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!