Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State • Hacker News Board

Re: Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State

#71

Post by mikepurvis » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

panzagl wrote: post #40

Arubis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parents of problem kids do everything they can to push their children’s behavioral issues back on the teachers. Whew. That's a lot of labeling! And the solution is to build evidence to be used against these tiny criminals. Rather than just presume the kids are little shits on purpose and recording them to prove it, why not ask the kid what's going on at home? I'd bet real money that "lack of discipline" maps pretty…

Well, yeah, but calling a parent in and saying 'you need to stop partying until 3am with your boyfriend of the week so Timmy can get some sleep and not be an impulsive little monster with no respect for his female teacher' does not go as well as you'd think.

I don't see how this scenario is changed by having video of the child's misbehaviour.

Re: Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State

#72

Post by mavhc » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #43

alistairSH wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeschool: Not a viable option for us. Both of us worked, with high salaries, but not high enough to easily forgo either income. Plus, neither of us felt qualified to teach some middle-school and many high-school level courses - so we worried about a transition from home-school into a school during adolescence. Private: We didn't see an upside in our region. Public schools are excellent. The local private schools do…

>Public schools have their problems. But most can be mitigated by "voting with your feet" I would like to note that this is tantamount to voting with your wallet. Areas with more expensive housing will have better public schools.

In USA, because they're funded by house taxes

Re: Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State

#73

Post by tptacek » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

giaour wrote: post #70

tptacek wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the teacher's job should be to teach, not to be a social worker.

True, but they should also not be required to secure surveillance infrastructure and purge collected data at regular intervals.

Why would they be?

Re: Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State

#74

Post by tptacek » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #59

tptacek wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the teacher's job should be to teach, not to be a social worker.

Teachers in K-12 have never been focused on solely dispensing academic knowledge. Acclimation, acculturation, socialization; the list goes on of what they've always been expected to do. My MIL always said that her job (K-4) was to teach the little monsters how to be civilized. If they learned the three Rs, that was a bonus.

My mom's a K-12 teacher too. Not only should it not be their job to be a social worker, they're not qualified to do that work, either.

Re: Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State

#75

Post by js2 » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

opwieurposiu wrote: post #14

Currently trying to decide how to school my kids ages 3yr and 1yr. Public, private or homeschool. Parents who have been there, How did you choose?

Two kids, 16 y/o son and 18 y/o daughter. Homeschooled. Both went to Montessori pre-school and kindergarten. Daughter started 1st grade in public school and within weeks our daughter who loved school and learning was starting to dread going to school. It was no one thing and our public school wasn't particularly bad. It was death by a thousand cuts:

- The adult tending the bus line who berated our daughter when her name was called but she didn't respond because her name was mispronounced and she didn't recognize it.

- The teacher who disciplined our daughter who was an advanced reader and finished a story quickly and then offered to help another student who was struggling but this wasn't allowed in the classroom.

- The immense amount of time wasted between classes not teaching.

- The music teacher who thought young kids were incapable of learning to read sheet music and had made up his own notation system.

- The teacher who was 8 months pregnant who would shortly leave the classroom and then there would be a series of substitutes with no continuity for the students.

And on and on.

Anyway, it worked well for us. It doesn't for everyone. My wife and our kids got along well. My kids turned out to be pretty good students. We could afford it. My wife who was otherwise unemployed enjoyed it.

We leveraged a ton of external resources: joined a secular homeschool group, co-op teaching, outside language and music teachers, extension classes offered by local science museums and universities, online courses, had our kids take a yearly standardized test to measure their progress, registered with the state as a homeschool, kept diligent records, kids did summer camps, karate, dance, were on sports teams, etc. I never would have guessed how booked our calendar became. I sometimes think we would have had more time to do things as a family if they'd stayed in public school. There's this idea you can take offseason vacations but this doesn't really work out because everything else you have your kids do is tied to a traditional school calendar.

It's a huge commitment and was a full time job for my wife. My son expressed some desire to go to high school but later changed his mind.

Anyway, you can try a year of homeschool and see how it works for you. We know lots of families who did both. For some it didn't work because the parent/child relationship isn't the same as teacher/student and for some of our friends the latter just didn't work out.

Also: there are many styles of homeschooling. Some will run things just like a traditional school but at home: fixed lesson plans, schedule, room to learn in, etc. At the other end you have unschooling. We took a middle ground. My wife has a lesson plan for the year, breaks it down by week. But we give our kids flexibility on each day. As they got older my wife would just put their daily or weekly tasks on a whiteboard and leave it to them to complete:

https://ibb.co/jyMgT4S

Good luck.

Re: Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State

#76

Post by ralusek » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

panzagl wrote: post #39

ralusek wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Not worth it. There are mountains of evidence demonstrating that people change their behaviors when they know they are being watched. Do we really care about the automatic resolution of petty squabbles between children, or even the coercion of children to never engage in petty squabbles? Do we really want to rob children of mischief, conflict resolution, and making a case for themselves in a way that cannot alw…

No one actually watches the video, unless something happens. And this is an elementary classroom- resolution of petty squabbles means 28 kids don't get to learn while 2 others yell 'he did it first'. They can be beasts to each other at recess.

> No one actually watches the video, unless something happens.

You must do PR for the NSA.

Re: Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State

#77

Post by edflsafoiewq » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

panzagl wrote: post #3

Since I can't read the article I can only go with story time here- my wife has cameras in her room and she loves them. Fights about 'who started it' are ended with the words, 'Ok, let's look at the video'. And when some little bully gets called on the carpet and their bullying parent comes in all set to steamroller administration with 'that's not what my child said happened why are you picking on them' the principal…

I'd be worried that that encourages extremely crude resolution strategies (ie. "Whoever threw the first punch is at fault. Look how objective this is! See, it's all on camera!").

Re: Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State

#78

Post by everdrive » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

panzagl wrote: post #58

everdrive wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it helps, this is a very realistic portrayal of how privacy is degraded over time. Invading privacy has all sorts of practical applications. You can fight crime more effectively, and measure trends, and generally be more effective at all sorts of capitalism and statecraft. But, problems, and risks just pile up over time. Just think of what we could do for just one small sacrifice!

But what privacy is there in a classroom? Theoretically the teacher could capture the same information by being more observant.

A wise teacher can offer a bit more dignity by choosing what they notice and draw attention to, or not.

Re: Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State

#79

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #74

greedo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers in K-12 have never been focused on solely dispensing academic knowledge. Acclimation, acculturation, socialization; the list goes on of what they've always been expected to do. My MIL always said that her job (K-4) was to teach the little monsters how to be civilized. If they learned the three Rs, that was a bonus.

My mom's a K-12 teacher too. Not only should it not be their job to be a social worker, they're not qualified to do that work, either.

They end up having to do it anyways.

Re: Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State

#80

Post by skybrian » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

behringer wrote: post #63

everdrive wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it helps, this is a very realistic portrayal of how privacy is degraded over time. Invading privacy has all sorts of practical applications. You can fight crime more effectively, and measure trends, and generally be more effective at all sorts of capitalism and statecraft. But, problems, and risks just pile up over time. Just think of what we could do for just one small sacrifice!

And let's get real here about how we solve problems with decreased privacy. Good luck ever getting an official to do anything for you. If it does not benefit them or the system, they never have the time or authority to do it. The surveillance is to benefit the state, not the surveilled.

This is abstraction. How do you apply that to the case of a teacher sending misbehaving kids to the principal's office, and what would you want instead?