Reading, Writing, RFID 650
supabeast! writes "Wired has a story about a public charter school in Buffalo that now tracks student attendence with mandatory RFID tags. The school's director said 'All this relates to safety and keeping track of kids...Eventually it will become a monitoring tool for us..' In the future the system will expand to '...track library loans, disciplinary records, cafeteria purchases and visits to the nurse's office...punctuality...and to verify the time [students] get on and off school buses.' I think that we can all stop calling the privacy advocates paranoid now."
Security cameras... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Security cameras... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Security cameras... (Score:2)
Re:Security cameras... (Score:2)
That Has already been done. [fda.gov]
Re:Security cameras... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Security cameras... (Score:5, Insightful)
Think their tone will change?
Re:Security cameras... (Score:2)
Re:Security cameras... (Score:2)
Re:Security cameras... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is for my own's sake. I trust my children. I don't trust yours.
Re:Security cameras... (Score:5, Insightful)
It should scare the HELL out of everyone to have this going on. It starts small with things you really don't object to because on the surface they seem to help... so you give up a little freedom for security, then a little more, then a little more, until something happens that you think is going too far then you find out you no longer have a choice in the matter because you gave up your right to decide bit by bit. We all need to take responsibility on our OWN shoulders, grow up and get everyone elses noses the hell out of our business. People in the Soviet Union are more free than we are! But if you like being under constant scrutiny you can always move to China.
Today's kids = tomorrow's workers. Prepare them! (Score:5, Insightful)
"School" as we know it was designed to train the children of subsistence farmers to be effective factory workers. Rather than getting up at dawn, working with their families at their own pace, and doing whatever it was subsistence farmers did for fun, the Industrial age required workers trained to wake up at the same time every day, respond to stimuli such as whistles ordering the start and end of the working day, and so on. A few generations of such schooling later, and it's become our cultural norm. At the time of the Industrial Revolution, the notion of schooling was nothing short of, well, revolutionary.
Fast-forward to today. We have Industrial-era schooling in an Security-era economy. Your post ("I don't see why kids should have it any better") is evidence of this - you seem to think that having the Panopticon in the workplace and government is a Bad Thing. And yet, you're learning; you're adapting, as evidenced in your next paragraph:
> When you have kids you'll take whatever steps are necessary to protect them. If that means they have to live without much privacy for 18 or so years of their life then so be it! They have approx. 70 more to have all the privacy they want.
Actually, they won't. But you're correct that the RFID-chipping of kids is a Good Thing. Just as you know no limits when it comes to keeping track track them for their protection, your employer and government has an interest in your well-being. Granted, the interest isn't as overarching as the relationship between parent and child; more like rancher and cattle. But show me a rancher who doesn't take care of his cattle, and I'll show you a rancher who's out of business in a year.
But back to school. We moved from the agricultural age to the industrial age, and we designed schools to raise children who would take us there. We now stand at the transitional generation from the industrial age to the security age. By getting the kids accustomed to the Panopticon at an early age, they'll graduate from school better-prepared to take part in the security society.
300 years ago, old farmers probably hated having to get up at oh-dark-hundred to go to the factory as much as you seem to dislike your zero-privacy expectation at work.
As a result of our transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society, we have a wide range of consumer goods ranging from broadband pr0n to advances in medical treatment that have doubled the human lifespan and nearly tripled the useful part of the human lifespan.
Today, you and I grumble, and your kids might even chafe (initially) at being chipped. Within a generation or so, our presecurity culture will also be abandoned, and 300 years from now, our descendants will look on us and our presecuity culture as just as primitive as we now imagine our preindustrial subsistence-farming ancestors.
Re:Today's kids = tomorrow's workers. Prepare them (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and your analogy with cattle & ranchers? You got it backwards. We are the ranchers and the politicians are the cattle. We tell them what to do, they listen to us. Yeah, it may seem like it's getting close to what you described,
Re:Today's kids = tomorrow's workers. Prepare them (Score:4, Insightful)
Correct. I'm not threatened by your willingness to pick up a gun to defend what you perceive as your rights. There are very few of you, your numbers are shrinking, and should your kind actually start firing that gun, your lives will be shortened quickly.
In our presently insecure society, the security meme propagates extremely well. It is outcrowding, and will continue to outcrowd, the privacy meme. People need to be led. They're willing to give their lives for security, never mind their privacy. Once the privacy meme has been effectively neutralized and a secure society established, there'll be a few stragglers, but they'll be recognized as paranoids or sociopaths, and given medical treatment to help them overcome their affliction.
> This boils down to our right to be anonymous in our speech and in our beliefs. Lack of privacy means lack of anonymity. A lack of anonymity means a lack of freedom in speech. A lack of freedom of speech means that we no longer control our own lives.
Anonymity (or even Slashdotesque pseudonymity) does not mean that you are not accountable to others for your actions, words, or thoughts. Privacy is not a shield for lawlessness; anonymity is not a shield for privacy.
may I be first to say (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:may I be first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Students have to touch a kiosk screen and then, it can only read your tag at less than 20 inches. So, this makes it just another form of swiping a mag-strip card for access control, or presenting a photo ID badge to a security guard. Having been a teacher, I can tell you this would be wonderful. Automating the roll taking process would save lots of time each class period dealing with absent, late, and excused kids.
Now, in my opinion, they are going a bit overboard with tracking lots of unnecessary information, such as when they boarded the bus. And even with this being just another form of card swiping, all this electronic tracking may still ruffle privacy activists feathers. But one things for sure, it's definitely not 1984.
Re:may I be first to say (Score:3, Informative)
For now. For how long? These are small details, small details can change - the principle is in place.
And the problem is???? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:2)
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:2)
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're really unlucky, you might still be alive when that happens.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got no problem with them using them. I've got
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, children have every right that adults have. It is up to adults to teach children how to live within those rights responsibly.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rights come with responsibilities. Children are inheriently irresponsible, precisely because they are children, thus they lack rights. Until they come of an age to take care of the associated repsonibilities they do NOT have the rights an adult has.
You live in fantasy land if you truely believe children have every right an adult does.
Even the Bill of Rights is limited in it's application to children.
It is the job of the child to earn those responsibilites, and the adults should nuture and enable the child to be able to handle responsibilities. However, should the parent not do so, the child is at fault when they come of majority age if they do not appropriately live withing the rights and responsibilities.
A child should learn to deal with those rights and responsibilites irrespective of the parents and the upbringing they receive. The fault lies with the child, not with the parent. While we may condemn the parent for the lack of parenting, when the child becomes an adult, it is the former child whom is punished, not the adult that failed to instruct the child.
Kirby
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
The laws regarding participation in government are relevant to the operation of government and not so much to individual liberty. The other laws regarding cars, alcohol, and guns are merely naive attempts at protecting chilren from responsibility and only postpone the inevitable lessons they will learn about life. These laws actually are only subtly different to what is going on with the RFID tracking devices. The RFID tags are just one more way to subjugate children into a second-class.
Further, the age
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Telling kids that "drugs are bad" a couple times per year is in no way the same as tracking their movements continuously.
Trust me, kids will both understand and know that tracking them is a violation of the rights of an adult. However, it's very important that kids learn that kids aren't adults, and they
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is irrelevant. The whole point is to prevent history repeating itself. The greivances listed in The Declaration of Independence is beginning to look like a checklist.
The representative government prescribed by the Constitution is one that was intended to be resistant to corruption not corruption-proof. It is still up to the People to keep the country free for their children and grand children.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens when they get out? "Wicked, I'm not being tracked anymore! I can do whatever I want to do, consequence free!"
I have strong feelings about technology 'absolving' humans from learning about responsibility and accoutability, and the merits of making the right choice when you're not forced at RFID-tag-point to do so.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:4, Informative)
What happens when they get out? "Wicked, I'm not being tracked anymore! I can do whatever I want to do, consequence free!"
This line arguement reminds me about my experience in the Air Force. After basic training, where they tell you when to sleep, when to get up, when to eat, what to wear and when to take a dump, you go to Tech School for training. They used to just let you do whatever you wanted once you got to tech school, but it was just like SirSlud said, everyone went batshit insane, ran into town and partook in general mayhem and too much merriment. They had to put a system in place so that you were slowly given back one freedom after another in phases. In phase one you could wear civilian clothes but only inside. Phase two you could wear them outside but you couldn't get off base. I don't remember all the stages but it took six weeks to get to "normal" freedom.
To try to get on topic again, we could say that it is human nature to react to oppression and ill-treatment in exact magnitude in the opposite direction. When people are subjected to extreme controls they will act in an uncontrolled manner when let free. When they are overly controlled, they will expect to be able to control others in like manner once they get in charge. I hope none of those kids gets elected President or to Congress. They will think that it is perfectly all right to try to control the rest of the population the way they were controlled and would probably use all the tools (violence) at their disposal to deal with the "unreasonable" (from their point of view) people who protest.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Technology like this is yet another excuse parents will use to be lazy, whether they realize it or not. As more aspects of behavior are codified into arbitrary systems and enforced by tracking devices, we merely become parts moving about in a de facto machine of regulation. Getting around the regulation will have sufficiently high barriers that people will assume the low-energy path and play along in their miserable barely tolerable lives.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if its used for a reasonable purpose.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, whether or not kids should be tracked is a different debate. I don't think there's any doubt that the idea is good on that level. What parent wouldn't feel more secure leaving their kids at school with this in place? Of course it's smart.
But becoming accustomed to being tracked everywhere, anytime, all the time is something that children shouldn't have to grow up blindly accepting.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Funny)
If you think the US is run by people under 30, maybe it's time you dipped your head in some smart juice.
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:2)
If they don't, after all, why do parents give their kids bedrooms with windowless doors?
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:2)
Tell me why keeping track of children in a school is such bad thing?
Tell me, when did regular attendance sheets become inadequate for this? Why does the school need to spend millions of dollars for RFID, when it's no more accurate than the old fashioned "check the box for each student that's here" method?
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And the problem is???? (Score:3, Interesting)
If children grow up accustomed to living in a safe, secure, surveilled environment, they will realize that the ones reanding about "privacy" and "liberty" are the true "paranoid freaks".
> Continous tracking gives a sense of dis-trust and that is totally worng psychologically, A kid needs to feel
Oh no... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh no... (Score:2)
Re:Oh no... (Score:2)
-l
Re:Oh no... (Score:2)
Historically, it has been considered rude to wear a hat indoors. That's where it got it's start.
Schools probably make a deal out of it as an expression of control over the students, but that doesn't change that it was at one point a universally accepted convention.
Re:Oh no... (Score:3, Funny)
Workaround: (Score:5, Funny)
Thus: false sense of security.
-l
Re:Workaround: (Score:2)
Re:Workaround: (Score:4, Insightful)
Concept of Security (Score:5, Insightful)
And they're doing this in the name of security, correct? So, every time he loses his ID card, you have to drop what you're doing to act on it, pony up $20.00 and he misses a day of school? What if the local bully decides to take his card from him every week? Is this really a sensible solution at all? If he loses his ID on the day of a big test, does he get the chance to make it up? Can you think of ways this could be abused?
It sounds like you need to reconsider the school your son attends. When their need to track him trumps his learning, the system needs revision.
Virg
Re:Workaround: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Workaround workaround (Score:5, Funny)
Funny? (Score:3, Interesting)
it should be modded as 'scary true'.
Get them as kids.. makes it an easier process to maintain it when adults. and after a generation or two, you get mass coverage.
Re:Workaround: (Score:2)
Until it becomes manditory to have RFID's embedded somewhere in out bodies (like maybe our fillings, or surgically implaneted into the back of our neck)
Easy to tell (Score:3, Informative)
Presumably if they're going to the trouble of determining all those other parameters, they'll also determine if the average distance between any two tags remains two low (ie, within two inches of each other because they're both around the same student's neck) or if the correlation between the positions of any two tags is too high (ie, because one's around a student's neck and the other is in his pocket for two stra
Re:Easy to tell (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Easy to tell (Score:5, Funny)
*Suzie blushes*
*Dave's friends start giving him high-fives*
Maybe you can... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm going to continue doing so until they can find an effective way to keep tabs on me...
Not the eyes (Score:5, Funny)
I can't wait to walk into the GAP, so they can read my RFID tag and announce to everybody around that I recently purchased an unusually large amount of womens' underwear.
Misleading story (both wired and slashdot) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Misleading story (both wired and slashdot) (Score:5, Informative)
"Intuitek President David M. Straitiff said his company built privacy protections into the school's RFID system, including limiting the reading range of the kiosks to less than 20 inches and making students touch the kiosk screen instead of passively being scanned by it. He pooh-poohed the notion that the system would be abused.
(It's) the same as swiping a mag-strip card for access control, or presenting a photo ID badge to a security guard, both of which are commonplace occurrences," Straitiff said."
Kinda takes the steam out of the story. Since whoever wrote this story left out or hid gigantic facts, I'm going to continue to call many privacy activists paranoid.
Re:Misleading story (both wired and slashdot) (Score:3, Insightful)
In the article:
"Intuitek President David M. Straitiff said his company built privacy protections into the school's RFID system, including limiting the reading range of the kiosks to less than 20 inches and making students touch the kiosk screen instead of passively being scanned by it. He pooh-poohed the notion that the system w
Re:Misleading story (both wired and slashdot) (Score:2)
Oh, well as long as they are only used to track peoplee from long distances... that's fine.
Next: the workplace (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Next: the workplace (Score:3, Informative)
School budgets? (Score:5, Insightful)
They've got endless budgets for in-classroom cameras, RFID name badges and seminars about file-sharing but never enough for field trips, athletic equipment or buses.
It just never seems to improve.
Re:School budgets? (Score:5, Funny)
"We now know exactly where all of our students are."
"That's really wonderful... uh... now what do we do with them?"
Re:School budgets? (Score:3, Insightful)
All I know is a lot of kids in school now don't know how to read and aren't being taught how to read.
Our schools are failing to educate our students.
Try Again (Score:3, Informative)
Charter schools are not private schools, and elementary schools are not higher education. A charter school is a public school with a specialized charter. Google it and you'll find a mass of optimistic and not-so-optimistic descriptions of charter schools.
Virg
Needs some improvements (Score:5, Funny)
For example, we could remotely help them with their homework, automatically remove them from dangerous situations, make them do funny dances and speak with foreign accents, as well as invade neighboring countries, all with the push of a button.
Here's to the future.
How does this violate a right? (Score:5, Interesting)
They are still free to choose attendance or ditching. They are still free to choose to return library books on time or keep them past the due date.
Their choices have consequences, and this technology will make sure those consequences are dealt as impersonally as a photo-radar speed trap, but I can't really see where anyone's civil rights are being violated.
I'm pretty far left-of-center, and I think this illustrates a much bigger problem of breakdown in trusting relationships between parents, teachers and kids, but could someone explain this one to me please?
--
Re:How does this violate a right? (Score:5, Insightful)
That Joe is a troublemaker. Hmm, Janie seems to hang out with him a lot, it's right here in the movement logs. Better bring her in and ask her some questions....
Re:How does this violate a right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How does this violate a right? (Score:3, Funny)
No sparrow falls (Score:5, Insightful)
Why it's bad -- thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
First there are the people who are breaking the rules, and who vaguely claim "privacy" as the reason to cover up their real reason. Unfortunately, these people just give ammo to the other foolish idea that "if you are doing the right thing, you have nothing to worry about".
The second group thinks it through a little deeper, and realizes the long term dangers of each little encroachment. What are the possible abuses? They will occur. What then?
If every movement of a child is tracked, who might want that data? Parents? Advertisers, even? Suppose the budget just didn't come through this year. Why provide the temptation for abuse? Suppose Johnny's aunt works in the main office, and isn't too keen on him dating that black girl because "it just isn't right". Funny how she's always suddenly walking past whenever they're together. Or suppose the administration decides to take a proactive approach to discipline by keeping an extra close eye on any student with any problematic history... including notifying the parents of the new friends that Johnny makes while trying for what he thought was a "fresh start" in high school. Is that right? How did Johnny's name even get on that list? Was that his aunt's doing? Or did a jealous classmate hack the central computer? Hey, it's like in the War Games movie, but you can do a hell of a lot more than just change your grade!
Now consider the psychological effects of living under a constant watchful eye. Keep in mind that you are not really acting morally until you do the right thing when you are NOT watched... that's really what matters. When do the students get to practice that?
Have you ever been driving alone on a road where you *knew* for certain that there were no cops for miles? Many teenagers (and some adults too..) would drive like maniacs, until the time they hit a deer, or nearly soiled their pants when that cardboard box in the road came out of nowhere... and they realize the reason for the speed limit laws. Learning that there are reasons behind most rules is part of growing up, and if the only reason for obedience is "because I said so, and I'll KNOW if you break the rules", won't it take a very long time for a kid to grow up?
As a parent... (Score:2)
Now if this were to find it's way into the workplace, that would suck. But not all monitoring technology is a bad thing.
Re:As a parent... (Score:2)
Right, so long as it's being done to someone else it's OK. When will people realize that if you won't defend other peoples rights noone will defend yours?
Re:As a parent... (Score:3, Insightful)
So...Unless a little scanner gnome follows the kid around at all times, how exactly is this different than swiping a time card or something? Kids in school are already tracked six ways from Sunday:
Get to school? Attendance sheet checkoff.
Don't get to school? Parents called to check on you.
Take out a library book? Scan school ID card.
Want school lunch?
Paranoid you say? Paranoid like a fox! (Score:5, Insightful)
Couple this with zero-tolerance policies (Score:5, Insightful)
and our kids are totally fucked. I predict an entire generation of useless paranoid humans who can't bear any responsibility, because of their paralyzing fear of irrational and inequitable punishment.
Even without these tags, I remember the animosity generated among kids when someone gets away with something (beats the system) while other kids get caught red-handed (brought a Swiss army knife to school, because, well, it's useful for stuff).
turnabout (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:turnabout (Score:2)
Along with the Civics and History classes.
if parents consent.... (Score:2)
not a bad idea (Score:2)
Ok, and how (Score:2)
This doesn't help if the teachers aren't making sure the students are actually there. And it sure as hell doesn't help them learn.
It's not as bad as you think (Score:2)
It's still not good. Its potential for abuse, from BOTH sides, is tremendous. There's bound to be lots of problems with implementation, and people can discreetly carry around other's badges for them.
Technology is schools is way over-hyped.
How long until some sicko... (Score:2)
This message brought to you by Extreme Outcome Predictors of America...
Getting children used to Big Brother (Score:4, Insightful)
The privacy advocate (implying most people aren't concerned with privacy) is exactly right. This move's effect (and probably its purpose) is to prepare children to accept ubiquitous monitoring and tracking, so they don't resist it when the cameras are installed on every city block in a few years.
My age group will be ridiculed as paranoid when I complain about the corporations/government start keeping detailed logs on everything I do, everyone I see, everywhere I go, etc. etc. After all, GovernCorp is only doing this for our protection, to keep the TERRORISTS away!!!
Watch as your children are taught to love Big Brother...
I toured San Quentin once.... (Score:3, Interesting)
What triggered this memory was two words near the start of page two: where it said "picture tags", I misread it as "prison tags". I think my subconscious was trying to tell me something.
It was interesting watching my own prejudices while reading the article as well; I started out with a "this is terrible!" preconception, but then that conception wavered quite a bit when the article carefully emphasized "inner-city school". I went to one of those for awhile; I don't know about all of them, but the one I was in was pretty awful, and that was almost thirty years ago.
Regardless of how bad the school is, I don't think there is any excuse for surveillance technology on everyone, whether or not they've been convicted of anything. Perhaps putting that kind of dog collar on kids with discipline problems would be ok, but on EVERYONE? Isn't school already enough like prison?
"Each morning at 7:30 AM, check your free will at the door. We'll return it to you, only slightly tarnished, in the afternoon. "
If you insist on putting a dog collar on children, you've got no gripe if you end up with dogs.
The real reason this is bad (Score:5, Insightful)
If my daughter's public school ever decided to do this, I will be the first parent to refuse to allow my daughter to carry the device.
An important reminder: the Consitution is not suspended just because you are in school. It still applies, despite what some control freaks would have you believe.
Re:The real reason this is bad (Score:3, Insightful)
No. The real problem is, when they grow up, they will be the government. And having grown up with these and similar monitoring schemes, they will have little problem in instituting it.
I wear one at work. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not exactly the same as RF, have to manually scan every where you go, but if you want access you have to scan.
I use a system called Powerbroker, that logs all my keystrokes when I log into systems, it can be used to replay sessions incase something went wrong. Also tracks everyone, incase someone did unathorized work.
My Net connection is logged in the corporate proxy, and if I hit an authorized site, it informs me that the site is blocked.
My wireless data and phonecalls are tracked, with detailed records. All the way down to my location using trianglation (we call it location-based services to the customers.) Not exactly E911 and GPS, but thats in the works.
About the only security I have is my own computer and system. Since IT doesnt control my Unix box or Laptop, I can have encrypted FileSystems, and encrypted containers to keep people out. Also I use encrypted tunnels to my own systems (ssh/ssl/vpn) so I can have un-monitored access. With Wireless data being around, you can have access to the net even if your IT department blocks you. Private IRC/IM/email and such.
I guess I noticed security and privacy issues, same goes with kids. The RFID's just monitor movement and services, not the actual data the kids use. If we started recording the converstations in the hall, and sniffers to read sms messages between kids, then its a REAL invasion of privacy.
In other news, anyone see that the Senate passed the Genetic Privacy Bill? Hopefully this gets signed into law, this is the real type of privacy we need. Thou, Flip side, criminals get put into a nation wide DNA database, go figure.
-
None of us is as dumb as all of us
And the problem is.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose it's sad that anyone thinks that this is necessary, but the same can be said for metal detectors and locks on the doors. The only problem I can see with this is if someone relies on on the RFID and ONLY the RFID for tracking purposes. Manual attendance counts should still be taken and verified to avoid any attempts to abuse the system. But lets not get too excited about a perceived loss of privacy where there really has never been a whole lot of it anyway.
-Restil
This is ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
The logical next step (Score:5, Insightful)
The original supporters of public education were largely supporting it for the purpose of subjugating the public. They saw mandatory public education as a means to subvert those of higher intellect, and to "level the playing field" so that people would be more easily managaged. Additionally, it was seen as a tool to sundivide people, and to cause folks to see artificial social barriers (such as age) where they were not, by dividing them up into such age-based groups.
When you consider that people throughout our history have been doing college-level work at around 12 (Benjamin Franklin, anyone?), this isn't in the least bit inconceiveable. Franklin wasn't a savant or anything like that - he had quite a few contemporaries: Washinton, Jefferson, Adams and the like. They also started adulthood at a younger age. (Franklin was a printer's apprentice at 12, and was doing graduate-level work, ot a degree, at that time).
When you contrast this historical treatment of education, vs. modern situations, where there are often intelligent people that do poorly in school, or simply do medicorely because they don't have the desire to invest themselves in something that is incredibly slow paced, and teens in general feel distant and confused, it's no small wonder.
This is just one step closer towards the Governing class being able to truely and completely subvert people: we're well on our way to thoughtcrime. I give he US (and maybe other countries too?) no more than 20 years until there is mandatory RFID-taging of every student, and maybe 30 years for every citizen - all globally locateable. All in the name of "stopping terrorists", and the easier management and control of the populace.
Doesn't make those "crazy" biblical philosophy folks seem that far off with the "mark of the beast". I guess now would probably be the right time to mention that Christianity has a strong centric emphasis on the individual, if I wanted to be flamed and start the trolls a' rolling.
DoublePlusUnGood (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh the irony.
Good to see the guys at MiniTrue working hard..
Coming from the point of view of a teacher... (Score:3, Informative)
What happened to the good ole days... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also this begs the question, if the RFID requirment is so harmless, then what are you going to do when a kid or parent refuses,
How much you'd want to bet that they'd call the parents extreme!
Kids... (Score:3, Interesting)
The current situation seems destined to produce adult children - people who have never experienced anything outside of the carefully sanitized artificial environment created for them. Maybe experiencing a little danger might be good for them.
Our society is obsessively compelled to believe (in large part thanks to media induced hysteria) that there are psychos and thugs around every corner. The reality is those of us in North America and Western Europe live in the SAFEST SOCIETY THERE EVER HAS BEEN.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a greater good to be had by letting our kids LIVE and LEARN (and risk) than locking them down every moment of their lives and then suddenly turning them loose when they are 18. Our society seems bound and determined to ensure children make the LEAST of the first 20 years of their life.
Best Quote (Score:3, Insightful)
Did anyone else spot this one?
Huxley [huxley.net], anyone?
Re:cheat around it... (Score:2)
Re:Security, indeed (Score:2)
Really? How? Oh, you mean, the teachers will know if you are in class? Like, if they had a list of kids in the class and at the beginning of the class they checked to make sure what students are there?
OMG! They're going to KNOW what students are in class that day! EVERYBODY RUN AND GET YOUR TIN FOIL HATS!!!
For some real eye-openers, read some of the opinions of people in the early 20th century when the telephone was first invading t
children == cattle (Score:3, Interesting)
Homeschool your kids. Or group homeschool them. Or something. Don't send them to McSchool.