Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems • Hacker News Board

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#71

Post by GrinningFool » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #55

momokoko wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can have zero tolerance for bullying and harassment, without 100 surveillance You absolutely, positively, cannot have that. Bullying is an all day every day thing with children. Especially boys. The only way you prevent it all the time is to never leave boys alone in a group with no monitoring or supervision. Edit: If you are downvoting or disagreeing with this, you are part of the absurdly unreasonable expecta…

>Bullying is an all day every day thing with children. Kids tease each other, they call each other names, they occasionally get into fist-fights, but that's not necessarily bullying. Bullying is systematic and targeted harassment; it is entirely right and proper that we should not tolerate it. If a kid is a bully, he's an asshole. He shouldn't necessarily be expelled or even necessarily suspended, but someone needs t…

> but someone needs to make it crystal clear to him that his behaviour is unacceptable and will not be tolerate

We've been working with the school following 'proper channels' for some ongoing incidents, and it hasn't been effective even though the school acknowledges the problem and that it is with the other kid involved.

All this focus on bullying is great - but it feels a lot like lip service. They spend huge amounts of time talking about how bullying is not acceptable - but little preventing it from occurring. If it's not acceptable, the school needs to treat it that way.

If they're not (and honestly, I don't think they can - they have limited people, and their primary goal is teaching), then it's up to the students to make clear to their peers that the behavior is not acceptable.

    > The solution to bullying isn't constant surveillance of 
    > children, it's teaching children how to stand up for themselves 
    > and instilling them with the sense of duty to stand up for their peers

We recently told our son that he's welcome to hit back when someone starts bullying him physically - he may get in trouble at school, but we'll support him at home. When 'proper channels' don't work, there's not a lot of options remaining.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#72

Post by bilbo0s » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

notathingreally wrote: post #68

GrinningFool wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I think we really need to investigate protecting the privacy of our youth. This is effectvely acclimating our children to minimal privacy as enforced by authoritarian organizations. If they're posting publicly, then they're posting publicly. Privacy isn't a thing. My advice to my son will be don't use social media; if you must use it, don't post publicly on it. If you must post publicly, know that everything you…

> If they're posting publicly, then they're posting publicly. Privacy isn't a thing. But in many cases they weren't. That article talks about taking personal photos off of a student's personal device just because they connected it to a school computer for a short time. It included things like nude photos. Now the school has committed child pornography by copying these photos from the student's device. I don't see how…

>Now the school has committed child pornography by copying these photos from the student's device...

This is where the law gets kids in way more trouble than is really necessary. There's a little known provision in most child porn laws that exempts people reporting child porn from charges. But think about it, to get that protection, you must report.

So they surreptitiously lift the pics from a kid's phone, and then the alerts go to the police chief, kid's counselor, administrators, etc etc. From there it can make its way to public prosecutors really quickly if calmer heads don't prevail among the adults who got the initial alerts. And calmer heads rarely prevail in my experience. (To be fair, I think most police chiefs may have an actual obligation to let prosecutors know about it? Not sure?)

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#73

Post by cr0sh » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #55

momokoko wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can have zero tolerance for bullying and harassment, without 100 surveillance You absolutely, positively, cannot have that. Bullying is an all day every day thing with children. Especially boys. The only way you prevent it all the time is to never leave boys alone in a group with no monitoring or supervision. Edit: If you are downvoting or disagreeing with this, you are part of the absurdly unreasonable expecta…

>Bullying is an all day every day thing with children. Kids tease each other, they call each other names, they occasionally get into fist-fights, but that's not necessarily bullying. Bullying is systematic and targeted harassment; it is entirely right and proper that we should not tolerate it. If a kid is a bully, he's an asshole. He shouldn't necessarily be expelled or even necessarily suspended, but someone needs t…

> If a kid is a bully, he's an asshole. He shouldn't necessarily be expelled or even necessarily suspended, but someone needs to make it crystal clear to him that his behaviour is unacceptable and will not be tolerated, otherwise he'll grow up to be an asshole and raise his kids to be assholes.

It's not entirely clear that this is true all the time.

I was reading a reddit thread the other day where the subject turned to bullying, people who were bullied, and people who were bullies.

There were several there who seemed sincere in that they claimed they had been bullies, but as they grew up, they grew out of it (some were "young bullies" - aged 8-10 or so, and grew out of it as teens, others were teens and worked it out as they became adults) - but were remorseful about their former actions. Many expressed the wish that they could apologize to those they tormented or hurt. Others noted that they had been able to do that; or noted that they had their bullies apologize to them. Some said it helped, others said that while they appreciated it to an extent, they still kept those people at arms length, as they didn't trust them. Others still mentioned becoming friends (in one case, their bully became their best man at their wedding!).

Yes, this is all anecdotal, and should be taken with a grain simply because "internet/reddit". At the same time, I don't think we can paint these people with a broad brush in either direction.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#74

Post by esaym » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

Noos wrote: post #56

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeschooling has come a long way. It’s a sacrifice, for sure, but far easier now than it was even 20 years ago.

You're complaining about an authoritarian public school system, but are replacing it with an even more authoritarian solution. Homeschooling keeps the child under the parent's eye 24-7 and completely captive to their worldview and idea. If that worldview and idea is for them to be "schooled" in helping their dad run his landscaping business, or being prepared to be married off, well, good luck. Public school is impor…

>Public school is important precisely because it is public. It gets the kid out to realize society exists and to deal with it as it exists.

Perhaps your public school was better than mine, but what I was conditioned into socially while in high school did not line up at all with "the real world".

At the age of 20, after many months of deep thought about my life's direction, I literally realized I needed to throw out everything I learned/was indoctrinated into by the public school and start over. The sad thing is, thanks to facebook, I've looked up many of my old high school buddies. They are still the same. They are 30+ years old now and act like they are still 15. Still playing the same video games, listening to the same kind of music, still showing the same attitudes, still not having any responsibility.

Which is the point I realized when I was 20, why send your teenager into an institution that will condition him/her into acting like a typical teenager? A person with a "teenager" mentality will never be a CEO, will never own a company, will never be successful and will never make wise choices. And why would they? They already know everything and can't be taught a dang thing.

Its clearly a two way street. I've seen some terrible products of homeschooling and I've seen some really good ones. But that brings the question of if the "terrible products" of homeschooling had went to public school, would they have been better off? I've going to assume probably not.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#75

Post by notathingreally » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #54

> Evergreen Public Schools in Washington state, for example, started using the company's service this school year. Between September and mid-March, the system flagged more than 9,000 incidents in the 26,000-student district. The overwhelming majority-84 percent-were for minor violations, such as profanity. The fact that the system even monitors for profanity at all tells me its purpose has a lot more to do with stude…

That was exactly my thought. How does finding an assignment with the word "pussy" in it help anyone? (Plus if it's an assignment, wouldn't the teacher eventually see it? WTF?) I just don't get what parents and school administrators think they're achieving with this given the potential harm that can come from it. Were I a parent, I certainly wouldn't want some random person at the school to have access to everything my kid does online. Especially knowing how creepy some of the school administrators I dealt with growing up were!

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#76

Post by lostcolony » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

Noos wrote: post #56

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeschooling has come a long way. It’s a sacrifice, for sure, but far easier now than it was even 20 years ago.

You're complaining about an authoritarian public school system, but are replacing it with an even more authoritarian solution. Homeschooling keeps the child under the parent's eye 24-7 and completely captive to their worldview and idea. If that worldview and idea is for them to be "schooled" in helping their dad run his landscaping business, or being prepared to be married off, well, good luck. Public school is impor…

The kind of parents that would object to this and find it a reason to homeschool aren't going to be "follow and don't question authority" kinds of parents.

Your concern for the children of parents who think public school is not authoritarian enough (and the children must stay home and be 'properly reared'), is fair.

But, that's just it. It's an alternative, that can be good or ill.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#77

Post by CWuestefeld » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #72

notathingreally wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they're posting publicly, then they're posting publicly. Privacy isn't a thing. But in many cases they weren't. That article talks about taking personal photos off of a student's personal device just because they connected it to a school computer for a short time. It included things like nude photos. Now the school has committed child pornography by copying these photos from the student's device. I don't see how…

> Now the school has committed child pornography by copying these photos from the student's device... This is where the law gets kids in way more trouble than is really necessary. There's a little known provision in most child porn laws that exempts people reporting child porn from charges. But think about it, to get that protection, you must report. So they surreptitiously lift the pics from a kid's phone, and then…

There's a little known provision in most child porn laws that exempts people reporting child porn from charges.

That doesn't fix the problem. If they're bulk downloading photos from a phone, then most of the photos are going to sit there unexamined. Later on, looking for something else, somebody will stumble upon those photos and discover that they've been sitting there for months or years. But the school hadn't been reporting the crime.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#78

Post by Noos » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #24

guitarbill wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might as well deprive them of normal social interactions and different opinions while you're at it. Personally, I'm glad my country does not allow such nonsense and hubris. Of course, it's a straw man, you can care about your children's education in other ways, and outside of school, too.

It varies depending on circumstances, of course, but the vast majority of homeschooled kids I've met are very well socialized, capable of reasoned debate, and quite well-rounded in their outlook on life. By contrast, in American public schools at least, I'm seeing a serious trend toward unhealthy social interactions, cyber bullying, teachers who only have time for testing, and more. If your country doesn't allow it,…

Yeah they are nice; they've been trained to be. A lot of their issues though only pop up later in life, like in college. Things like struggling with deadlines, since now teach isn't mom who needs to go shopping and will let you turn in your homework late, or who can be bullied to do so. Or remedial ed; a lot of homschoolers are massively deficient in math, since very few parents can teach it.

There are issues with the ones you don't meet; lax homeschooling regulation and oversight can easily cover for parental abuse, and unschooling can really mess up a kid too.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#79

Post by heywot » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

Noos wrote: post #56

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeschooling has come a long way. It’s a sacrifice, for sure, but far easier now than it was even 20 years ago.

You're complaining about an authoritarian public school system, but are replacing it with an even more authoritarian solution. Homeschooling keeps the child under the parent's eye 24-7 and completely captive to their worldview and idea. If that worldview and idea is for them to be "schooled" in helping their dad run his landscaping business, or being prepared to be married off, well, good luck. Public school is impor…

This is a really dismal view of homeschooling that I don't really understand. Are there bad situations with homeschooling? Absolutely! Are there bad situations in public schools? Absolutely! One is not inherently better than the other.

Maybe myself, my siblings, and our many homeschooled friends are just abnormalities, but we have never had issues embracing society, understanding it, and we never needed to have "fix" our parent's influence later in life. Do I know kids that struggled with that? Sure. You want to know where else I see kids deal with all the issues you mentioned? Public school. Lots of 'em.

I don't know if you were homeschooled as a kid and had a bad experience, know someone who did, or are just spouting the typical "homeschooling is bad! they have no social abilities!" arguments I hear constantly. But I would encourage you to maybe challenge that perspective. Homeschooling can be a wonderful tool and equip kids in ways that public schools are simply not able to. It takes a ton of work. It's not for everyone. But to say it is inherently a lesser education and experience than public schools just doesn't line up.

Re: Schools Are Deploying Digital Surveillance Systems

#80

Post by esaym » Thu, Jun 06, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

guitarbill wrote: post #33

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It varies depending on circumstances, of course, but the vast majority of homeschooled kids I've met are very well socialized, capable of reasoned debate, and quite well-rounded in their outlook on life. By contrast, in American public schools at least, I'm seeing a serious trend toward unhealthy social interactions, cyber bullying, teachers who only have time for testing, and more. If your country doesn't allow it,…

> I'm seeing a serious trend toward unhealthy social interactions, cyber bullying Admittedly the "cyber" part is relatively new, but that's called being a teenager. I'd rather my kids have this learning experience for the future. Me having to help them through it is simply part of being a parent. Especially if it's difficult, there's a learning experience in that. > If your country doesn't allow it, you may not have…

>Finally, it's bizarre to me that in a first-world country, smart and rich parents have decided the education system is so broken, it needs to be worked around instead of engaging with it

Most homeschooling programs in the USA are (were) heavily religion based. But, in the last 10 years I've seen a growing number of non-religious curriculums that are now available. This clearly shows that neither the religious nor the atheists are happy with the schooling system. There's clearly a problem. And in the same time period (at least in Texas), the standardized testing has increased which leaves schools with less freedom on what to teach as all time must be devoted to what is on the test (which is of questionable content)