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.
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.