While working on my Masters degree, I supported myself working as a substitute high school teacher. Every day at work I saw the cruel politics of the highschool social order played out. There are the tormentors and the tormented, the same social classes that existed while I was in HighSchool. Amoung the tormented, there are a few that I would consider dangerous. But these poor souls are, as has been said many times before, usually the product of mental illness. What bothers me about this is the psychological implications of this sort of targeting. To the typical, harmless student, being pulled aside and forced to be examined under a microscope for signs of a predisposition towards violence, is just another painful and embaressing ritual they have to endure. This alone is bad enough. But what happens when they get one of the violent ones. Nobody has considered what effect this will have. Imagine the sense of empowerment a potentially dangerous student might receive when, sitting in frount of a Principal or School Psyhcologist, he or she comes to the startling realization "They are afraid of me". Belive it or not, Highschoolers are more intellegent that most people give them credit for. They are unexperienced, and lack a certian amount of maturity, but they do have an understanding of what goes around them. I cannot think of one student, while in High School, who did not hold the beliefe that their teachers and administrators were incompitant boobs. At best, being 'chosen' to the tpyical violent youth will become a typical rite of passage down the road to deliquancy. At worst, to the truly mentally disturbed, it will solidify their feelings of parinoia, there feeling of being singled out and picked on. Even if we ignore the dangerously unconstitutional nature of this program, this well meaning experiment will most likely cause more harm then good. If WAVE really wanted to work, if they insisted on getting students to call up anonymously, I'd prefer they would do so to rat out teachers and administrators. I remember a rather unfortunate incident that happened to me in school, while a teacher walked by, and laughed. At the time I had no recourse. When I was a teacher myself, I saw first hand how uncaring and non responsive other teachers and administrators are. Granted, not all teachers allow the sort of unruly behavor that could cause a young student to reach a braking point, but most do, and they simply dont care. I would love to see the company respond to a school district "We have had quite a few anonymous complaints about teacher X. You should send him/her into a counsoling program to make them understand what their job really is."
I don't see it so much as a waste then a way of getting the population confortable with the technology. Its interesting that they mentioned 'pet therapy'. The underside of technology is that we will soon have robots replacing people for a number of tasks they really shouldn't. At the moment, yes, a robot cat is more expensive and less effective then a real cat, but eventually it will not be. By the time we have the technology to build a relitivly realistic robotic cat and dog, and so as long as people view them as toys or substitutes for the real thing, the companys' investment will begin to pay off: Robotic home health care or Robotic nursing assistants. Eventually, all of your physical and emotional needs will be provided for via robots and technology. I can't say I'm sure this is for the best.
Rather then tell newspapers what they should do, I'd like them to know what *I* do, or rather did. There will always be a place for newspapers, but I can see why it would be difficult for them to survive in today's digital age. Perhaps once a month I'll go to the newstand and pick up a Sunday paper and go over it during a long breakfast. This is a weekend pleasure, usually while hung-over, that is becomming more and more difficult to come by. Ultimatly, however, I simply don't have time for a plain paper version of a newspaper. I do, however, have a love of keeping up with the days events. Typically, this involves listining to public radio in the car. I've tried television news, but have found the local news seems to harp on schlock, while national cable news networks spend too much time on issues I'm not concerened with. The news and features on NPR seem to fit most of my wants, but compleatly ignore any local issues. Enter the newspaper. I've lived in several places around the United States, and have found that there are hudge differences in the quality and content of newspapers. If you get a good one, you get both national and local news in an intellegent, easy to read fashion. If you get a bad one (and, yes, most of them are bad), you get the same sort of pointless drivel you can find on the local newscast on television. A few years ago, it startled me that so many newspapers were investing so much in the web. They approached the internet with a philosophy that seemed to say "We don't know why we are here, but were going to be here". At best I assumed they figured "We didn't do much with radio, or television, and they took away readers. We are not going to let that happen again". When I lived in Los Angeles, I would spend each morning before work at the latimes.com and the cnn.com web site. I enjoyed the LA Times site. Now that I live in Phoenix, the local paper's website is lacking (much like the paper itself). I still have an interest in local news, but I am simply unwilling to point my browser to a substandard newssource. What I have found, now, is that I get almost all of my online news from web sites that link to other web sites. Slashdot is a good place for me to start. fark.com and tomshardware.com are others. I'll go to a web site that I think would have links to other news sites that I might find interesting. It is just more effecient that way. If my local newspaper was interested in keeping me reading it, it has do a few things: 1. Become credible. Write compelling articles with journelistic integrity. When a regional Pittsburgh paper wrote a few years ago that there *is* Alien space craft behind the comet hale-bop, I put down the paper and laughed. If the New York Times printed that story, I'd be concerened. The difference was in the credibility of the two. 2. Write what people need to know. We get examples of this now in spades with the elections. Yes, I do want to know who is winning the primary elections, but day after day of the soap opera that goes on...I neither need or want to know about that. 3. Be easy to read. Have important national and local stories on the frount page. Don't run a giant picture and a human interest story on page one and make me hunt for any of the meat.
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While working on my Masters degree, I supported myself working as a substitute high school teacher. Every day at work I saw the cruel politics of the highschool social order played out. There are the tormentors and the tormented, the same social classes that existed while I was in HighSchool. Amoung the tormented, there are a few that I would consider dangerous. But these poor souls are, as has been said many times before, usually the product of mental illness. What bothers me about this is the psychological implications of this sort of targeting. To the typical, harmless student, being pulled aside and forced to be examined under a microscope for signs of a predisposition towards violence, is just another painful and embaressing ritual they have to endure. This alone is bad enough. But what happens when they get one of the violent ones. Nobody has considered what effect this will have. Imagine the sense of empowerment a potentially dangerous student might receive when, sitting in frount of a Principal or School Psyhcologist, he or she comes to the startling realization "They are afraid of me". Belive it or not, Highschoolers are more intellegent that most people give them credit for. They are unexperienced, and lack a certian amount of maturity, but they do have an understanding of what goes around them. I cannot think of one student, while in High School, who did not hold the beliefe that their teachers and administrators were incompitant boobs. At best, being 'chosen' to the tpyical violent youth will become a typical rite of passage down the road to deliquancy. At worst, to the truly mentally disturbed, it will solidify their feelings of parinoia, there feeling of being singled out and picked on. Even if we ignore the dangerously unconstitutional nature of this program, this well meaning experiment will most likely cause more harm then good. If WAVE really wanted to work, if they insisted on getting students to call up anonymously, I'd prefer they would do so to rat out teachers and administrators. I remember a rather unfortunate incident that happened to me in school, while a teacher walked by, and laughed. At the time I had no recourse. When I was a teacher myself, I saw first hand how uncaring and non responsive other teachers and administrators are. Granted, not all teachers allow the sort of unruly behavor that could cause a young student to reach a braking point, but most do, and they simply dont care. I would love to see the company respond to a school district "We have had quite a few anonymous complaints about teacher X. You should send him/her into a counsoling program to make them understand what their job really is."
I don't see it so much as a waste then a way of getting the population confortable with the technology. Its interesting that they mentioned 'pet therapy'. The underside of technology is that we will soon have robots replacing people for a number of tasks they really shouldn't. At the moment, yes, a robot cat is more expensive and less effective then a real cat, but eventually it will not be. By the time we have the technology to build a relitivly realistic robotic cat and dog, and so as long as people view them as toys or substitutes for the real thing, the companys' investment will begin to pay off: Robotic home health care or Robotic nursing assistants. Eventually, all of your physical and emotional needs will be provided for via robots and technology. I can't say I'm sure this is for the best.
Rather then tell newspapers what they should do, I'd like them to know what *I* do, or rather did. There will always be a place for newspapers, but I can see why it would be difficult for them to survive in today's digital age. Perhaps once a month I'll go to the newstand and pick up a Sunday paper and go over it during a long breakfast. This is a weekend pleasure, usually while hung-over, that is becomming more and more difficult to come by. Ultimatly, however, I simply don't have time for a plain paper version of a newspaper. I do, however, have a love of keeping up with the days events. Typically, this involves listining to public radio in the car. I've tried television news, but have found the local news seems to harp on schlock, while national cable news networks spend too much time on issues I'm not concerened with. The news and features on NPR seem to fit most of my wants, but compleatly ignore any local issues. Enter the newspaper. I've lived in several places around the United States, and have found that there are hudge differences in the quality and content of newspapers. If you get a good one, you get both national and local news in an intellegent, easy to read fashion. If you get a bad one (and, yes, most of them are bad), you get the same sort of pointless drivel you can find on the local newscast on television. A few years ago, it startled me that so many newspapers were investing so much in the web. They approached the internet with a philosophy that seemed to say "We don't know why we are here, but were going to be here". At best I assumed they figured "We didn't do much with radio, or television, and they took away readers. We are not going to let that happen again". When I lived in Los Angeles, I would spend each morning before work at the latimes.com and the cnn.com web site. I enjoyed the LA Times site. Now that I live in Phoenix, the local paper's website is lacking (much like the paper itself). I still have an interest in local news, but I am simply unwilling to point my browser to a substandard newssource. What I have found, now, is that I get almost all of my online news from web sites that link to other web sites. Slashdot is a good place for me to start. fark.com and tomshardware.com are others. I'll go to a web site that I think would have links to other news sites that I might find interesting. It is just more effecient that way. If my local newspaper was interested in keeping me reading it, it has do a few things: 1. Become credible. Write compelling articles with journelistic integrity. When a regional Pittsburgh paper wrote a few years ago that there *is* Alien space craft behind the comet hale-bop, I put down the paper and laughed. If the New York Times printed that story, I'd be concerened. The difference was in the credibility of the two. 2. Write what people need to know. We get examples of this now in spades with the elections. Yes, I do want to know who is winning the primary elections, but day after day of the soap opera that goes on...I neither need or want to know about that. 3. Be easy to read. Have important national and local stories on the frount page. Don't run a giant picture and a human interest story on page one and make me hunt for any of the meat.