If I have learned anything in the last 20 years, it's that "The Chilling Effect" is very real. We're building nothing but a culture of fear. People come to expect and even desire to be watched.
A couple years ago, they installed cameras in our office ostensibly to "lock the doors in case of a gunman" shortly after a gunman had broken into a nearby office building. For that to even be remotely possible though, someone literally has to be constantly watching those cameras and the gunman has to be clearly brandishing the weapon. It's at best security theater and no one is watching, and at worst a horrible privacy violation. I see no upside. Talking to coworkers I was seemingly the only one with any concerns, and it feels like I'm taking crazy pills.
I just installed a dash cam after someone backed into me and drove off. My girlfriend couldn't stand it, so I had to turn audio recording off. Even with that and the camera only facing outward, she said she was painfully aware of its presence.
My 9 year old recently said "why are there only cameras outside the school. They should also put them in classrooms for when the teacher has to go to the bathroom"
Mainland China is already trialing that. They have classroom cameras pointed at students, with some sort of primitive ML that classifies their "attentiveness level" and generates reports.
- "Here's how it works. Every 30 seconds, three cameras installed in the front of the room scan each student's face to determine their expression: surprised, sad, antipathy, angry, happy, afraid, or neutral."
- "The cameras also record each student's actions throughout the class, noting whether they are reading, listening, writing, standing up, raising hands, or leaning on the desk."
- "Smart eye then notifies the teacher in real-time if it notices that a student appears distracted. The teacher can also view a report at the end of the class that provides an average of each student's expressions."
- [embedded tweet] "What else can surveillance cameras do in classroom other than exam supervision? High school in #Hangzhou uses camera to identify students facial expression for class performance analysis and improvement pic.twitter.com/bXolAE7Ev8 — People's Daily,China (@PDChina) May 16, 2018"
The United States already did this as well in 2010, and the spying extended into the home.
> Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa., said they first found out about the alleged spying last November after their son Blake was accused by a Harriton High School official of "improper behavior in his home" and shown a photograph taken by his laptop.
> An assistant principal at Harriton later confirmed that the district could remotely activate the webcam in students' laptops. "Michael Robbins thereafter verified, through [Assistant Principal] Ms. Matsko, that the school district in fact has the ability to remotely activate the webcam contained in a student's personal laptop computer issued by the school district at any time it chose and to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam, all without the knowledge, permission or authorization of any persons then and there using the laptop computer," the lawsuit stated.
This sounds like an issue at your child’s school, more than an argument for surveillance.
A teacher should never leave the classroom unattended with students inside. What’s happening when the teacher leaves that’s making your child wish there were cameras?
Speaking as an educator myself, I’d be having a conversation with the principal. Something’s not right there.
> A teacher should never leave the classroom unattended with students inside.
maybe things have changed a lot since I was in grade school, but this was surprising to read. I'd expect that a teacher should only rarely leave during class, because it would be a waste of class time, but beyond that I don't see why it's so serious. when I was in school, the class would often fill up with students before the teacher was present. unless the teacher was teaching several periods in the same room back-to-back, there would always be at least a few students arriving before the teacher. is that not a thing these days?
For example, the evidence in GP’s post is that the child wishes an adult could see what happens when the teacher leaves the room. This sounds like a kid telling their parent about a problem at school, not a kid idly musing about surveillance.
I think the kids haven’t changed, it’s parents and admin. Setting aside whether we think teachers should be able to leave, the fact of the matter is that it’s a massive liability.
The teacher is responsible for the care of the children under their charge. Probably you would be understanding, but all it takes is one terrible moment, and one parent screaming to the superintendent that the teacher negligently left little Timmy unsupervised to cause a huge problem for the teacher and school admin.
Anyway, it’s very easy to get someone to cover your class for five minutes while you make copies or take a leak.
This attitude is so weird to me and entirely different from when I was in school. Students were treated as miniature adults, not some kind of hospital patient. If the teacher needed to run a quick errand, make copies, etc. it wasn’t a big deal.
Female teachers have complained about UTIs and bladder infections from having to hold it for long periods of time. Students can ask for a hall pass, but adults aren't extended that opportunity.
Given that when teachers leave the room, students start parkouring off of furniture or gang-raping each other (and uploading it to social media), that's unlikely to change anytime soon.
I didn't intend to minimize the child's concern from GGP's post, I remember all the terrible things that children are capable of. but I remember those things happening in the hallways, bathrooms, and locker rooms more than in the actual classroom. never leaving the room during class seems kinda arbitrary when there are so many opportunities for the students to harm each other.
a better way of asking my question might have been: is there something special about never leaving the classroom specifically, or has the expectation evolved to "students will absolutely never be unsupervised during school hours"? given that teachers also need time to physically move between their office, the cafeteria, bathroom, and classroom, this seems hard to achieve.
> all it takes is one terrible moment, and one parent screaming to the superintendent that the teacher negligently left little Timmy unsupervised to cause a huge problem for the teacher and school admin.
And that is a big part of the problem. In the saner times, decades ago, the superintendent would tell such parent to GTFO, and that would be the end of it. It worked out well, because adults were more cooperative; now, the parent-school relationship seems fully antagonistic. These days, a single crazy or malicious parent can terrorize the entire school - and a big reason for cameras and student surveillance is thus to give the school some means to defend itself and the other kids.
> A teacher should never leave the classroom unattended with students inside.
I struggle to even imagine your school. My Canadian teachers routinely left to photocopy work, and that's just the one that stuck out when thinking of examples. Yes, in elementary school too. No, not that long ago. All my schooling was after the year 2000.
> We are talking about students here, not criminals.
It's becoming difficult to distinguish the two. A population with limited rights, compelled by law to be confined to a building[1] every day, under armed guard, often against their will, ostensibly for their own good, subject to rules they do not have a say in, their fate in the hands of callous and sometimes cruel authority figures.
You’re not crazy. You’re making valid observations about the limitations and negative psychological effects of surveillance. There’s an interesting Æon Flux episode about it.
I personally expect not an iota of privacy in the workplace already, so even the chance of someone spotting something on the camera is an improvement over where I consider things to be.
A couple years ago, they installed cameras in our office ostensibly to "lock the doors in case of a gunman" shortly after a gunman had broken into a nearby office building. For that to even be remotely possible though, someone literally has to be constantly watching those cameras and the gunman has to be clearly brandishing the weapon. It's at best security theater and no one is watching, and at worst a horrible privacy violation. I see no upside. Talking to coworkers I was seemingly the only one with any concerns, and it feels like I'm taking crazy pills.