A few years ago I found out my nephew's Kindergarten had implemented fingerprint scanners for all students. They get to scan their fingerprint when checking in or out of lunch, going to the bathroom, arriving and leaving school.
Promoted as a safety feature to ensure they knew where the kids were and that they were ok. I was asked to go in with my brother and talk to them about it. They said it was all ok because that the actual fingerprints aren't stored on the system, only information derived from the fingerprints, the system wasn't costing them anything because some Edu-Tech company was paying for it as a test, no other persons had complained about the tech, not one, we were the first, and it's kind of weird that we are opposed to children's safety.
We asked that my nephew not participate in the trial and they agreed, though he reported after that he was often forced to be scanned anyway.
A couple years later I asked another parent about the fingerprint scanners and they didn't know what I was talking about, so either they were removed, or parents are simply not reading the notices they are sent home and often even asked to sign.
> They said it was all ok because that the actual fingerprints aren't stored on the system, only information derived from the fingerprints
I hate this blatantly flawed reasoning. The data collection is the problem, and it doesn't matter if you store pictures of fingers/faces/irises/ids or just their post-process signatures, it's still data collection.
Forcing students to generate data and then using it against them isn’t incidental to education, it’s the whole thing. Imagine having the right to edit, delete, and restrict processing of your grades and attendance records. Imagine having the right to an equal shot at college admission while declining to reveal any test scores. It would upend everything about school.
Starting school at 7:30 has negative academic value, because half the students aren't even awake yet.
It's done because it's convenient for parents, who have to drop their kids off, who, for some reason, are 'incapable' of walking to school like their parents did.
A class of 32-35 students per teacher has no positive academic value. It is purely a cost-saving measure, that leaves everyone with a half-assed education.
Having to ask permission to piss, hall passes, limits on the number of students allowed to use the restroom at a time (typically 1/class) has more in common with a prison, or maybe boot camp, than a school. And, of course, there's no time in the 5-minute between class break for everyone who needs to, to both use the facilities, and get to their class, on time. It is done purely for social control reasons.
The expectation that teachers also do the job of social workers results in a lot of anti-academic outcomes. When your teacher, in a class of 30, is more concerned about how to deal with behaviour problems for a kid whose parents are, say, raging, shitty alcoholics, is not particularly conductive to the academic development of their peers. But that's not the school's, or the teacher's fault, so I can give that a pass.
AI essay grading (which is a more modern development, and works about as well as asking a monkey to grade essays) is the new thing that's popular to complain about. Negative academic value, but it saves time for teachers, who don't want to spend hours grading the hours of homework they assign. I don't blame them for preferring to have a 10-hour workday, instead of a 15-hour one, but still...
Some teachers give out bathroom passes that if you do not use them for the semester they can be turned in for extra credit. Extra credit for holding your bladder. Educational value: zero
I think these are valid criticisms of school/school life and I agree that there is room for improvement. I don't feel that these issues mean that school doesn't value academics or supports the addition of things that don't have academic value. Operating an education system at scale, on budget and effectively seems like a herculean task and I'm willing to accept the end result won't be perfect.
You’re downvoted for some reason but you’re correct. Public school is about the power of the state over individuals. Data collection in the form of attendance is the business model. Schools get paid only to the extent they have data on the kids. No data means no public schools. What’s the saying, if something is free then you’re the product. True for Facebook and true for public education.
>> What’s the saying, if something is free then you’re the product. True for Facebook and true for public education.
Public education is hardly free. Parents are generally required by law to educate their children. Society has generally decided to do that collectively, sharing the cost via taxes. Attendance is one tool used in enforcing the education requirement.
Are patients in countries with nationalized healthcare the ‘product’.
Historically they were more like the livestock technically - invested in for exploitability. Don't get me wrong it does real good but the original motives weren't altruistic but power related.
If I recall correctly in the UK WWI comscription revealed a disturbingly large percentage were too unhealthy to serve in ways which could have been prevented with medical care. If it was actually altruistic or even optimality related it would have been addressed earlier for either humanitarian or productivity reasons.
It's a really hard argument to refute, because once you bring "power" and the "subconscious" into arguments almost nothing is falsifiable. Nevertheless some possible contradictory evidence:
1. Look at all of the people throughout history who fought for education, e.g. blacks in America. Obviously they perceived some value in receiving an education and did not just have it imposed on them.
2. Look at the statements of educators and public education advocates throughout history. They speak broadly about the advantage to the individual and the ability to better oneself.
I could go on, but the reality is that you can always argue that something fundamentally comes down to "power." It's such a vague concept and so ever-present in the relations of social animals like humans that it isn't really separable from anything we do. You could argue basically every idea we have is just a collective illusion to foster social cohesion. That's the thesis of the book "Sapiens," for example. I think comparing public schools to "you are the product" things like Facebook is sort of facile and silly though.
Refreshing angle but I don't see how it would help with college admission. We have admission exams at some Universities here. That seems to give everybody an equal shot. You may hide your previous grades and attendance but you can't fake knowledge on a blank piece of paper.
> * it's kind of weird that we are opposed to children's safety.*
They're hoovering up PII that belongs to children and giving it to some company, and parents have to just trust that both the school and said company can keep it safe.
> trust that both the school and said company can keep it safe.
Safe, to be used later to build a profile of your child, and sell it to employers, insurance companies, the police, intelligence agencies, or anyone else willing to pay a few cents or send a subpoena.
How safe will they be when, 20 years from now, their classmate is arrested for political crimes, and this data shows that they were friends during school?
Are you saying that it's good because they only need to trust these 2 entities? Isn't it better to not have to trust either? There wasn't a need to provide this info before.
Almost every school in my area (UK) uses fingerprint scanners, including my son's. They're used only for purchasing food from the school's cafeteria.
I'm quite "privacy aware" and don't really have any problems with this. The schools act under GDPR, the data stored is just a hash of the fingerprint, and compared to the data held on the school management software, a fingerprint hash is pretty negligible.
My kid could pay in cash, but that introduces the possibility of losing it or having it stolen. They could use an ID card, which again can be lost and would still end up storing data.
My kid's elementary school in the US uses their initials and a five digit PIN.
It took about a week for them to learn their PIN (during which time they had a card with the number) when they started school but, several years later, it works fine and doesn't involve exposing their biometric or other PII data.
We used 7 digit code that was assigned to us. It stayed with you K-12. You could 'prepay' for your meals with a single check. I did that until one day the entire school found out my number was 1008000. Suddenly, I had no money to buy lunch and a large amount of library fines. They couldn't change my number so my parents were forced to give me 2 dollars every day and I knew the librarians very well.
A while back in Texas my wife and I got a lovely call from one of our children's school counselors because our child's search history the previous evening, on their school issued chrome laptop, had included a search for symptoms of cyanide poisoning which apparently triggered one of the systems used to detect those sorts of things. It turns out that the search was related to a homework assignment for a book they had been reading...
Did you and your child know about that systemic monitoring in advance? I mean were you explicitly told that search history (and presumably other activity) would be monitored by the school in real time?
Searches about suicide/murder-related topics could lead to life-saving interventions. One sympathizes with families that didn't or couldn't read the warning signs, and understands why they'd whole-heartedly support monitoring.
The other side is that children learn there is an intense adult response to certain topics. That may lead to excessive interest in that topic. Or ever more secretive behavior. Or an inability to challenge authority.
On one side of the balance is maybe a student's life. On the other is more students' mental health and autonomy. Life usually wins, but only history can judge whether that's wise.
Why stop with monitoring the computer? It would be easier to just plant a device to monitor thoughts and every action. Surely, this would only be used for good, and after all, it’s all about safety.
The monitoring for safety argument is merely an excuse to eliminate the right to privacy and shift the power to a government entity. Never in the history of mankind has this power ever been abused.
Every action has a consequence, and intentions do not matter. What will the consequences of millions of non-life-saving interventions be? We need to keep in mind that we are rolling these technologies out in an entirely blanket fashion, affecting millions of children and adolescents, and we are doing it to prevent exceptionally rare events. In the aftermath of Columbine, schools received lists of "warning signs" derived from nothing objective or accurate. These lists painted targets on the back of dozens of kids. At every single school. Every single year. The lists claimed to assist in identifying potential school shooters. Shooters who were students we know for a fact were present at only a single school, and only one or two every couple years. Why weren't these lists discarded immediately as they were very visibly and provably wrong? The answer to that question is what will support the continued expansion of surveillance in schools relentlessly, even in the face of evidence that it does more harm than good.
Your response applies equally to a world where every kid has their own privacy-enabled, perfectly secure free software phone with data monitored and occasionally transmitted by an AI agent that is programmed jointly by the child and a technically-minded parent.
Meanwhile, the article is about third-party data slurpers sitting in between the school and the Chromebooks that are supplied to a captive audience of millions of minors. The tradeoff here isn't between security and freedom. It's between whatever security the third-party claims to deliver and the risks from what the third-party actually does with the data to turn a profit. We have to gain insight into that fundamental question before we can begin reflect on your point.
It’s pretty much guaranteed that the next generation will grow up with the experience of always watched. Either they get watched by the parents who never let them do anything alone or by technology. Pretty sad in my view but almost inevitable.
Starting with kindergarten at my kids' school, they send home photos of the kids every so often during the day and also periodically have the kids post assignments they're working on (on their iPads—yes they give the kindergarteners iPads, god I wish they wouldn't but they do, and this is one of the good schools in the area).
I worry about the effect this near-real-time performance thing will have on them—it seems different, somehow, from just knowing your parents will see a graded paper come home in a week or two, to do it and immediately post it, where parents can comment and everything. It's creepy.
I think you are right about everything but the timescale: the current generation of kids already grew up under constant surveillance...by their parents.
When I grew up, during evenings weekends and holidays, kids ran around in the neighborhood with their friends from sunup to sundown. Outside of mealtimes, parents had no idea where we were.
A generation later and parents started to time-box everything their kids do, soccer practise, play dates etc.
I think this is what makes millenials so comfortable with online surveillance, they see it as benevolent and benign, just like their parents were.
1) Ambition for kids to get into the right preschool so they can get into Harvard or whatever, causing more parents to put their kids in 'enriching' scheduled activities.
2) Unreasonable fear fueled by the media. Ironically, stranger child abduction gas been declining steadily for decades and is at an all time low.
This has effectively removed more free range kids to the point now that if you wanted your kids to go play outside, they wouldn't find any other kids out there to play with.
This is why I call it a reverse network effect. The value in playing outside for a kid is now lower since there are fewer potential playmates out there.
As sad as this seems, theres always an ebb and flow of things. Many of these kids will grow up and accept that "this is the way things are", but many others once they learn history will yearn for the world the learn about, where they don't have to think about what they write and if anything might be flagged. Such kids will probably also become experts at evading monitors, a portion of which may become deeply passionate activists for privacy.
Its not all doom and gloom, there's hope for things to go the other way, towards privacy and freedom.
As someone raised by helicopter parents that were way ahead of their time, this has been kind of nice for me.
It's pretty amusing to me that I used to be the weird one connected to the internet all the time because I pretty much couldn't do anything else, and now that's a shared experience with the entire new generation.
How can the schools just allow any free product to be installed in their systems simply because someone offered them said service or product for free. These (test subjects) are our kids. There should be boundaries set forth by the law not to allow any said system or service to collect any data on kids under a given age.
I guess as long as someone offers security - it’s ok to disregard privacy.
It is funny though, because both sides use the same "think about the children" argument. One side: surveil them for their safety, and the other: do not surveil them for their safety. I omitted the reasons, just merely wanted to point out how both sides use the same argument. Personally I am in favor of less surveillance of everyone, not just kids.
The possibility of strike back, massively trolling all the school if students team and decide to search for controversial statements all the time, everybody at the same time, or search "What to do if a teacher try to abuse sexually of me" just for fun, is fabulous. Matherial of legend.
If the alarm is triggered at a higher level, the school direction will gasp and remove the program in a hurry for fear of being signaled as a conflictive place with low score. If not the disruption and massive lose of time and calling to annoyed parents would taint or nuke the stupid data collecting bussiness.
Obviously being watched all the time will cause distress and strange behaviour in students, something that psychologists will understand perfectly with just an innocent sad look.
This. Kids are smart and the amount of ways to troll these 'ai' and 'smart systems' are endless. Hell, make a script that just searches endlessly controversial topics, and boom all that data is worthless. For every company trying to spy on these kids, theres a student who understands how these systems work and we all know how creative and open-minded younger people are.
In a perverted sense, this is an opportunity to teach the children a very important lesson: if you're using a machine or network owned and operated by your employer (or, by extension, your school), then you should be scrupulous about only using it for work (or school) business.
Very firm agree. These devices were school owned, and technically "government" owned property. They were not handed out to the students to use however they pleased. They were to be utilized for digital text books, curriculum, and ancillary education resources that were designed by the teachers and administrators of the district.
We locked the devices down so that student's couldn't get to certain kinds of apps, parts of the web, and had to be used with school issued Apple IDs. We (as the school district) were wholly responsible for what the student's did on these school owned devices. It's no different than monitoring what goes on in a school's computer lab, except the iPads are mobile devices.
Take money via taxes, and give it back in the form of laptops - oh but now there's strings attached.
That something is 'government owned' is no excuse for such a disgusting violation of privacy. Services paid by taxes should serve, not act as means to control people.
> We (as the school district) were wholly responsible for what the student's did on these school owned devices.
Why?? By what legal theory?? If person A gives item X to person B, why would A be responsible for what B does with X? Maybe if B was a minor and did not get parental consent - but that was not the case, was it?
School administration operates under a not unjustified terror of having their careers ruined if anyone successfully accuses them of "letting something happen", whether it would have been reasonable that they stop it or not. Where "something" is usually bullying, any sex stuff, or self harm or suicide.
If you assume that for every decision they make the #1 concern is to make it as difficult as possible to personally blame them for anything, that'll be a good guide to understanding their behavior.
Why should we just give public schools a pass for providing kids with email addresses and other adult technologies that have no real educational value?
Giving devices to kids is not saving on educational costs, and it's not making their backpacks any lighter. Books don't require tech support lines, chat bots, or surveillance tech to keep it all humming smoothly.
But worse of all, it's totally outside the proper purview of our education systems. Public schools don't implement, monitor, and protect a new mailbox on every student's property just for school-related mail delivery. Why should they be giving kids email addresses and expecting them to use those addresses?
School-issued Apple IDs? I cannot be the only one who reads that with extreme disgust and concern.
Books? Who uses books anymore? My kids have had laptops for school since the 2nd grade, they are in 5th and 8th grade now. Syllabus & courses, homework, communication, research all on their laptops. Everything is interactive, videos and classroom lectures recorded. No paper, they never miss a thing, can move ahead in assignments or review old.
My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20. The more I hear about shit like this, the more I think that should be this generation's first computer, too. Something they can't hurt themselves with.
Bring back Apple IIs in the classrooms. And the TV/VCR combo on the wheeled cart.
in general, you are responsible for whatever is done with your account/machine, authorized or not. if you are doing even the bare minimum to secure the computer, you should not be vulnerable to these kind of pranks from siblings/classmates.
if it's unreasonable to expect a child to clear this bar, then they are not yet responsible enough to be entrusted with their own computing device.
> in general, you are responsible for whatever is done with your account/machine, authorized or not. if you are doing even the bare minimum to secure the computer, you should not be vulnerable to these kind of pranks from siblings/classmates.
This makes sense in a corporate or military environment, but is simply not reasonable for home use. You're claiming that one can never allow anyone else to have unsupervised physical access to the machine (regardless of whether it's locked, powered off, etc)
I should have been more clear. I'm not talking about sophisticated adversaries performing hardware attacks on a middle school student's laptop. I'm talking about the very basic steps necessary to prevent your brother from googling for porn on your school computer. in the vast majority of cases, having a good password and logging out of the computer when you're finished will prevent these kinds of pranks. if the child can't handle this, they are not ready for their own computer.
I'm not criticizing the children. I am criticizing the people who are forcing computers on people who are (according to the responses) not ready to use them in an organizational setting.
That's not been true for almost every device I can think of other than firearms/explosives. If someone steals your car and crashes it are you responsible? If not why are computers different?
> If someone steals your car and crashes it are you responsible?
I know of at least one country in Eastern Europe where this is true. If someone steals your car and kills someone with it, you are in serious trouble. I do not agree with the law.
when a computer is provided to you by an organization, you are usually obligated to take reasonable steps to prevent its misuse and especially to prevent misuse of your credentials. do you really disagree that this is the case?
Does reasonable steps imply "prevent all bad actors in all cases"?
Are the users expected to store their machines in fort Knox under armed guard?
>if you are doing even the bare minimum to secure the computer, you should not be vulnerable to these kind of pranks from siblings/classmates.
This is a statement that reads to me like "implementation is left as an exercise for the reader" type proclamation of how easy it is to secure things. Followed up with a snide remark about children not being ready for the machines.
Adults are constantly getting their machines compromised so it really seems like you're just applying a greater standard to people with less experience
> Does reasonable steps imply "prevent all bad actors in all cases"?
of course not, that's an incredibly uncharitable reading of "reasonable", not even an intelligence agency would set such an impossible standard.
keep in mind this whole thread started with a comment about "what if your brother googles something bad as a prank?" I'm literally just talking about setting a password that isn't "password" and locking the computer when you walk away from it. this will protect you from attacks by the vast majority of schoolchildren. if a child can't prevent their friends from misusing their school account, they really shouldn't have one. I'm not sure why this is considered snide or controversial at all.
Because this argument is tone deaf and ignores that kids are, well, kids.
Actual adults have terrible security practices. Are you seriously trying to hold kids, who had no choice in the matter, to the same security standards? They’re kids, and likely won’t even understand the gravity of the situation we’re discussing here.
These aren’t grown adults working at a company. They’re kids who had laptops foisted upon them.
even in school, it's actually kind of important that students don't let each other trivially access their accounts. if someone logs into your account and bullies a classmate or copies your work, "I left it unlocked in the cafeteria" can't be an acceptable excuse.
> Actual adults have terrible security practices. Are you seriously trying to hold kids, who had no choice in the matter, to the same security standards? They’re kids, and likely won’t even understand the gravity of the situation we’re discussing here.
> These aren’t grown adults working at a company. They’re kids who had laptops foisted upon them.
this is my point. I'm not holding the kids to any standard; I'm just saying this is a fundamental precondition to being entrusted with an account at an organization. if it's not reasonable to expect this of them, the school should not be issuing computers/accounts. the ultimate responsibility absolutely lies with the school.
I understand your statement after explanation but in your original post you said
>if it's unreasonable to expect a child to clear this bar, then they are not yet responsible enough to be entrusted with their own computing device.
There is no English interpretation of this that comes across as you saying it's the schools responsibility. It 100% sounds like you put the onus on the children
Everyone agrees with that, unfortunately if an unfortunate kid leaves their computer unsecured in a school environment they risk a criminal record if a prankster searches Google with the keywords that trigger the system. In a corporate environment that just won't happen. It's madness, but "if you see something, say something". Or something.
What part about stolen don't you understand? People take reasonable steps to secure their cars, because it's financially painful, but it still happens!
why are you and others talking about stolen cars and hardware attacks in a thread about schoolchild pranks?
I don't think most organizations would hold you at fault if someone stole your computer and used a hardware exploit to gain access to your account. but if you have a blatantly terrible password or just leave the machine unsecured in a cafe, they will probably hold you accountable for whatever happens. I know my employer would.
It seems like the product was originally an internet filter for pornography etc. but now the companies are competing on features. The main one is the profanity filter but they've started using AI to detect other things like self-harm threats etc.
The monitoring seems mostly limited to school laptops and cloud services, so presumably students who don't like it can use their phones if they have them. The companies all have more invasive home products but those report to the parents rather than the school.
Another story that has not been told is how gifted students in America are inventoried and tracked with IQ tests and other supposed "resource" programs. The GATE program in California is just one example of a dual-purpose, duplicitous program that can be easily exploited for spy and national security research recruiting to the military-industrial complex. More investigative journalism research on this topic is needed to find out exactly who, what, when and where it may be going on.
As long as it's limited to school devices and school email/chat, I don't see the problem. Maybe it's just me, but my dad instilled in me early on that anything I do on the internet is there permanently for anyone who cares enough to see.
The problem arises from immediate action on the part of the administrators, stemming from zero-tolerance policies that are usually present. Exercising restraint with respect to these tools would lead to better outcomes, in my opinion.
>The problem arises from immediate action on the part of the administrators, stemming from zero-tolerance policies [...] Exercising restraint with respect to these tools would lead to better outcomes, in my opinion.
In fairness, there are a lot of laws out there that compel teachers, administrators, and school resource officers to take certain disciplinary actions without regard to their personal feelings on the matter. Zero Tolerance is like the whole Mandatory Minimum thing. A judge may know that it is asinine to sentence this pot dealing kid to 10 years in prison, but the law says that's the minimum, so what can the judge really do?
If a school resource officer sees something in the computer logs, or on security video, or wherever, I mean, they are police officers. They may have certain legal obligations that come with having reviewed that evidence. They accessed it, the system knows it was accessed. If something new happens and some other officer ends up reviewing all this information, the fact that the resource officer accessed it and had knowledge of previous offenses will cause trouble for that resource officer.
If you want them to show restraint, then you need to change the laws. Teachers, resource officers, etc, don't have the power to do that unilaterally. We would have to give power to ignore things to teachers, administrators, resource officers, coaches, etc.
Overrule the law, declare it unjust, be the balance to the legislative branch. Yeah, that comes with the possibility of appeals and having another judge change the ruling. But that's how the system should work.
You're absolutely right about school employees, though - they're required to act lest their lack of action affect their careers. What needs to change is that the accused student needs the same rights an adult would have: the right to have your day in "court" with the possibility that the decision is 'not guilty.'
Parents who sue schools over their privacy has every right to be.
Fines dont always have to be about monetary compensation. You can make it criminal, then things would change. There are other ways other than money to act as detertent. Shutting down private schools could be one.
They will probably receiprocate this amount of distrust at some point in their lives.
But go ahead, treat children like criminals. Perhaps some will even do a good old school shooting and you could finally be proud of yourselves that you have seen it coming. It would let the industry flourish like nothing else.
"Schools feel massive pressure to demonstrate that they’re doing something to keep kids safe" - No kidding...
Promoted as a safety feature to ensure they knew where the kids were and that they were ok. I was asked to go in with my brother and talk to them about it. They said it was all ok because that the actual fingerprints aren't stored on the system, only information derived from the fingerprints, the system wasn't costing them anything because some Edu-Tech company was paying for it as a test, no other persons had complained about the tech, not one, we were the first, and it's kind of weird that we are opposed to children's safety.
We asked that my nephew not participate in the trial and they agreed, though he reported after that he was often forced to be scanned anyway.
A couple years later I asked another parent about the fingerprint scanners and they didn't know what I was talking about, so either they were removed, or parents are simply not reading the notices they are sent home and often even asked to sign.