8 ms·

Seen Not Heard: How Obscure Security Makes Schools Suck

41 points by dfield 17y ago

ilkhd2 17y ago
Tomorrow they'll prohibit 1984, Animal Farm and will remove Hitler from history course. A day after that they'll put cameras in you apartment, as a required part of lease. Welcome to brave new USA.
- redcap 17y ago
  Wasn't the insidious thing about Hitler that people actually loved him out of ignorance? My impression is that there was far more surveillance of citizens in Communist East Germany than Nazi Germany. If you can get people to actually love you rather than fear you, you don't need a surveillance system in every house (or every neighbourhood as the Stasi system was set up).
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    It's way more complicated than that - but in essence yet. The problem with Hitler was that the propaganda was rock solid (so, yeh, ignorance in the sense of misdirection I guess) and initially he fixed some stuff, or appeared too, that was important to the populace. Of course he then turned out to be insane but by that point (and more precisely the point when the populace started to realize) it was kinda too late.
Confusion 17y ago
Despite having heard such stories many times now, they keep amazing me. From a European perspective, the whole thing is insane. I doubt there is a single school in the whole of Western Europe with camera's and security guards. The first time I heard about these things, I thought they were excesses that would surely lead to outrage and would be overturned. Instead, these measures gain ground. How can there not be a significant movement to restore the sanity of the USA?
- axod 17y ago
  The idea of college police and school counsellor are also really hard for me to understand. It's a scary world :/ (I mean scary in the ridiculous measures supposed to 'protect us', not scary because of real threats).
  - yalurker 17y ago
    What is hard to understand about a school counselor? They are a point of contact for advice about which classes to take at what time, how to find internships & scholarships, what to put on a resume, etc. It seems like a straight forward and useful job.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  (insert obligatory comment about how we're really just trying to catch up to the UK in the War on Youth(TM))
  - scotty79 17y ago
    Aren't the adults alway freaking out about youth and trying to contain them as they were wild animals with every measure available?
- natrius 17y ago
  I thought cameras where everywhere in the UK? That's what the internet tells me, at least.
  - jdietrich 17y ago
    There's a substantial cultural gap between the UK and the rest of Europe. We've been described as "in Europe, but not of it" which I think is quite apt. The UK has more security cameras per capita than anywhere else in the world. We have more security cameras than the whole of China. This is in stark contrast to our low-surveillance neighbours on the continent who are used to seeing only a few cameras used to oversee a specific high-risk area. Many inner-city British schools now have security guards and a permanent police presence. In London (where the panic over knife crime is at it's worst) it's not uncommon to find secondary schools with airport-style screening at the front doors.
vishaldpatel 17y ago
Perhaps the cameras are a teaching tool. You learn in school how to do mischief despite the cameras so you can get away with it in real life! :P
- scotty79 17y ago
  Swapping forbidden data, library of forbidden books, underground leaflet campaign, clean samples for urine test. They are just preparing kids to get by in future America. That's a good thing.
  - JBiserkov 17y ago
    Gattaca
ErrantX 17y ago
This link from the article disgusted me: http://boingboing.net/2009/05/24/kid-keeping-a-lendin.html http://boingboing.net/2009/05/24/kid-keeping-a-lendin.html All those books banned? Sick. :(
- imp 17y ago
  Well, it was only a post on Yahoo Answers, so there's a reasonable chance it was fake.
- anamax 17y ago
  > All those books banned? Actually, none of those books are banned. Americans are perfectly free to buy them. There is a difference between "a govt won't buy for you" and "banned". You wouldn't write "vanilla ice cream is banned" if a govt didn't buy it for you so why do you think that a book is banned just because a govt didn't buy it for someone?
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    > Actually, none of those books are banned. Americans are perfectly free to buy them. Of course, I realise that - if you read the article it is about them being banned at a school (I never clarified that because I assumed it was obvious ;)) I consider that awful: books like catcher in the rye (and similar) are great reads when your growing up/developing. And some of the other books (His Dark Materials for example) are just great yarns! Banning them from kids is bad.
    - anamax 17y ago
      > I never clarified that because I assumed it was obvious Thanks for confirming that your title was purposefully deceptive. And, yes, I read the article and noticed what you did. > it is about them being banned at a school No. What was banned was a private lending library. Sort of like they "ban" candy sales. However, you wouldn't put it that way for candy. There are lots of great reads, and none of them are banned. They're just not provided by public schools.
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
rationality fails the instant a child is involved. "for the children" has thus been the cry of those who seek to circumvent our analytical faculties since at least ancient greece.
- jcmhn 17y ago
  You can't get much more direct access to human motivation than with child safety issues. A reasonable argument can be made that child health and safety is pretty much the point of human civilization in the first place.
plesn 17y ago
It reminds us the hard way that school is an ambiguous beast: it has an educational side, but it has also a disciplinary side, as people like Foucault where pointing. It is made to prepare children to obey to their superiors, to follow strict schedules imposed from outside, and soon, it prepares them to always be watched. Our future ?
chanux 17y ago
It's not as bad as this in my experience. But The students are given some pressure. I've seen teachers who think School is some military training place and treat students like they were criminals. And they only receive similar treatments. The teachers who were kind and gentle received love, even from the toughest kids.
j_baker 17y ago
It sounds like technology's the only thing that's changed since I was in school. The adults are still paranoid as hell.
lmkg 17y ago
Very important point here: > She accomplished [having well-behaved students] not though harsh discipline, but by treating us with respect and being genuinely hurt if we did not return it. People rise, and lower, to your expectations. The more you treat your students like potential criminals, the more they'll act like ones because of (largely unconcious) expectations that that's how they're supposed to behave. My college had a very liberal behavior policy. During student orientation, we were all told, explicitly, that the only real rule was "don't be a jackass." We were allowed as much alcohol as we wanted, as long as we drank responsibly. We were allowed take-home tests, as long as we didn't cheat (most such tests had hard time constraints, too). We were allowed free run of the academic facilities at all hours, as long as we didn't abuse the privelage. We were allowed to make all sorts of bonfires as long as no one got hurt[1]. You were allowed to pull all sorts of stupid pranks on people, including faculty and administrators, as long as you left contact information and could clean it up in 24 hours. Guess what? There were very few problems. No incidents of alcohol poisoning, vanishingly small amounts of alcohol-related theft or assault or property damage, and maybe one or two instances of people breaking in and stealing/breaking things during my time there. All of the stupid pranks were done in good faith, taken in good humor, and tended not to involve the police (unless that was part of the prank). No fire damage, and no drunk people falling into fires. People self-reported if they accidentally went over the time limit on a test. Perhaps most importantly, the students had very good relationships with the faculty and administrators. Being able to walk into a professor's office and ask them for help (whether academic or otherwise) is invaluable, both as a resource and as a habit to develop. The escalation of security in schools is a Chinese Finger Trap. Kids are acting juvenile, sound the alarm, we must stop them! Now they're acting even more juvenile, sound the alarm louder and try even harder to stop them! Et cetera. Treat kids like criminals-in-waiting and you'll get criminals. Treat them like responsible adults and you'll get adults. [1] Actually, there were some additional restrictions on fires, but that wasn't our fault. One time the women's college across the street thought a dorm was burning down and called the fire department, so now bonfires are not allowed to exceed the height of a dorm building.

41 points by dfield 17y ago

Tomorrow they'll prohibit 1984, Animal Farm and will remove Hitler from history course. A day after that they'll put cameras in you apartment, as a required part of lease. Welcome to brave new USA.

redcap 17y ago
Wasn't the insidious thing about Hitler that people actually loved him out of ignorance? My impression is that there was far more surveillance of citizens in Communist East Germany than Nazi Germany. If you can get people to actually love you rather than fear you, you don't need a surveillance system in every house (or every neighbourhood as the Stasi system was set up).
- ErrantX 17y ago
  It's way more complicated than that - but in essence yet. The problem with Hitler was that the propaganda was rock solid (so, yeh, ignorance in the sense of misdirection I guess) and initially he fixed some stuff, or appeared too, that was important to the populace. Of course he then turned out to be insane but by that point (and more precisely the point when the populace started to realize) it was kinda too late.

Confusion 17y ago

Despite having heard such stories many times now, they keep amazing me. From a European perspective, the whole thing is insane. I doubt there is a single school in the whole of Western Europe with camera's and security guards. The first time I heard about these things, I thought they were excesses that would surely lead to outrage and would be overturned. Instead, these measures gain ground. How can there not be a significant movement to restore the sanity of the USA?

axod 17y ago
The idea of college police and school counsellor are also really hard for me to understand. It's a scary world :/ (I mean scary in the ridiculous measures supposed to 'protect us', not scary because of real threats).
- yalurker 17y ago
  What is hard to understand about a school counselor? They are a point of contact for advice about which classes to take at what time, how to find internships & scholarships, what to put on a resume, etc. It seems like a straight forward and useful job.
ubernostrum 17y ago
(insert obligatory comment about how we're really just trying to catch up to the UK in the War on Youth(TM))
- scotty79 17y ago
  Aren't the adults alway freaking out about youth and trying to contain them as they were wild animals with every measure available?
natrius 17y ago
I thought cameras where everywhere in the UK? That's what the internet tells me, at least.
- jdietrich 17y ago
  There's a substantial cultural gap between the UK and the rest of Europe. We've been described as "in Europe, but not of it" which I think is quite apt. The UK has more security cameras per capita than anywhere else in the world. We have more security cameras than the whole of China. This is in stark contrast to our low-surveillance neighbours on the continent who are used to seeing only a few cameras used to oversee a specific high-risk area. Many inner-city British schools now have security guards and a permanent police presence. In London (where the panic over knife crime is at it's worst) it's not uncommon to find secondary schools with airport-style screening at the front doors.

vishaldpatel 17y ago

Perhaps the cameras are a teaching tool. You learn in school how to do mischief despite the cameras so you can get away with it in real life! :P

scotty79 17y ago
Swapping forbidden data, library of forbidden books, underground leaflet campaign, clean samples for urine test. They are just preparing kids to get by in future America. That's a good thing.
- JBiserkov 17y ago
  Gattaca

ErrantX 17y ago

This link from the article disgusted me: http://boingboing.net/2009/05/24/kid-keeping-a-lendin.html http://boingboing.net/2009/05/24/kid-keeping-a-lendin.html All those books banned? Sick. :(

imp 17y ago
Well, it was only a post on Yahoo Answers, so there's a reasonable chance it was fake.
anamax 17y ago
> All those books banned? Actually, none of those books are banned. Americans are perfectly free to buy them. There is a difference between "a govt won't buy for you" and "banned". You wouldn't write "vanilla ice cream is banned" if a govt didn't buy it for you so why do you think that a book is banned just because a govt didn't buy it for someone?
- ErrantX 17y ago
  > Actually, none of those books are banned. Americans are perfectly free to buy them. Of course, I realise that - if you read the article it is about them being banned at a school (I never clarified that because I assumed it was obvious ;)) I consider that awful: books like catcher in the rye (and similar) are great reads when your growing up/developing. And some of the other books (His Dark Materials for example) are just great yarns! Banning them from kids is bad.
  - anamax 17y ago
    > I never clarified that because I assumed it was obvious Thanks for confirming that your title was purposefully deceptive. And, yes, I read the article and noticed what you did. > it is about them being banned at a school No. What was banned was a private lending library. Sort of like they "ban" candy sales. However, you wouldn't put it that way for candy. There are lots of great reads, and none of them are banned. They're just not provided by public schools.

nazgulnarsil 17y ago

rationality fails the instant a child is involved. "for the children" has thus been the cry of those who seek to circumvent our analytical faculties since at least ancient greece.

jcmhn 17y ago
You can't get much more direct access to human motivation than with child safety issues. A reasonable argument can be made that child health and safety is pretty much the point of human civilization in the first place.

plesn 17y ago

It reminds us the hard way that school is an ambiguous beast: it has an educational side, but it has also a disciplinary side, as people like Foucault where pointing. It is made to prepare children to obey to their superiors, to follow strict schedules imposed from outside, and soon, it prepares them to always be watched. Our future ?

chanux 17y ago

It's not as bad as this in my experience. But The students are given some pressure. I've seen teachers who think School is some military training place and treat students like they were criminals. And they only receive similar treatments. The teachers who were kind and gentle received love, even from the toughest kids.

j_baker 17y ago

It sounds like technology's the only thing that's changed since I was in school. The adults are still paranoid as hell.

lmkg 17y ago

Very important point here: > She accomplished [having well-behaved students] not though harsh discipline, but by treating us with respect and being genuinely hurt if we did not return it. People rise, and lower, to your expectations. The more you treat your students like potential criminals, the more they'll act like ones because of (largely unconcious) expectations that that's how they're supposed to behave. My college had a very liberal behavior policy. During student orientation, we were all told, explicitly, that the only real rule was "don't be a jackass." We were allowed as much alcohol as we wanted, as long as we drank responsibly. We were allowed take-home tests, as long as we didn't cheat (most such tests had hard time constraints, too). We were allowed free run of the academic facilities at all hours, as long as we didn't abuse the privelage. We were allowed to make all sorts of bonfires as long as no one got hurt[1]. You were allowed to pull all sorts of stupid pranks on people, including faculty and administrators, as long as you left contact information and could clean it up in 24 hours. Guess what? There were very few problems. No incidents of alcohol poisoning, vanishingly small amounts of alcohol-related theft or assault or property damage, and maybe one or two instances of people breaking in and stealing/breaking things during my time there. All of the stupid pranks were done in good faith, taken in good humor, and tended not to involve the police (unless that was part of the prank). No fire damage, and no drunk people falling into fires. People self-reported if they accidentally went over the time limit on a test. Perhaps most importantly, the students had very good relationships with the faculty and administrators. Being able to walk into a professor's office and ask them for help (whether academic or otherwise) is invaluable, both as a resource and as a habit to develop. The escalation of security in schools is a Chinese Finger Trap. Kids are acting juvenile, sound the alarm, we must stop them! Now they're acting even more juvenile, sound the alarm louder and try even harder to stop them! Et cetera. Treat kids like criminals-in-waiting and you'll get criminals. Treat them like responsible adults and you'll get adults. [1] Actually, there were some additional restrictions on fires, but that wasn't our fault. One time the women's college across the street thought a dorm was burning down and called the fire department, so now bonfires are not allowed to exceed the height of a dorm building.