The eduFire Blog

Read this article today over on the Global Scholar blog and I just could not keep from commenting:

Surveillance Cameras in the Classroom

When students know that their misdeeds are being captured on a video surveillance camera, I believe that it can help enforce discipline with those at risk children. It also can clearly document to their parents or guardians their misdeeds in the classroom.

If this is what we have come to as a society then something is seriously, seriously wrong. Leaving all the Big Brother elements aside, a lot of this rings true to much of the Gatto reading I’ve been doing lately. For instance, here’s something by him I read a couple of days ago:

In the training ground of the classroom, everything is reduced to bits under close management control. This allows progress to be quantified into precise rankings to track students throughout their careers — the great irony being that it’s not intellectual growth that grades and reports really measure, but obedience to authority.

I have a host of problems with the thought of children being filmed in the classroom as a means to curtail bad behavior but here’s the biggest issue I took with the blog post:

It was written by a guy who does public relations for security companies.

As someone who works in public relations for a security companies, I had asked my wife why her school hadn’t placed security cameras into her classroom.

What business does Global Scholar, a company whose tagline reads “Empowering the world to learn”, have allowing someone who is paid by security companies to write a blog post about why we should feel good about videotaping children in classrooms for the express purpose of monitoring bad behavior?

Is this a bit unsettling to anyone else?

(Note: Click on the image in this post for the definition of irony. :))

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