← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · LlenLleawc

School requires radio ID tags for students

Thread ID: 16695 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2005-02-10

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LlenLleawc [OP]

2005-02-10 19:30 | User Profile

[I]Good morning OD, I haven't had much chance to post lately, been too busy and I'm trying to spend less time in front of a computer screen, but this story scares the hell out of me. It's a must read. Children are being conditioned to accept Big Brother. Orwell was an optimist.[/I]

[url]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6946395/[/url]

Calif. school requires radio ID tags for students Critics attack policy, seeing ‘Big Brother’ lurking in hallways

The Associated Press Updated: 11:36 a.m. ET Feb. 10, 2005

SUTTER, Calif. - The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will rob their children of privacy.

The badges introduced at Brittan Elementary School on Jan. 18 rely on the same radio frequency and scanner technology that companies use to track livestock and product inventory.

While similar devices are being tested at several schools in Japan so parents can know when their children arrive and leave, Brittan appears to be the first U.S. school district to embrace such a monitoring system.

Civil libertarians hope to keep it that way.

ACLU seeks to snuff experiment in bud “If this school doesn’t stand up (and oppose the use of the technology), then other schools might adopt it,” Nicole Ozer, a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union, warned school board members at a meeting Tuesday night. “You might be a small community, but you are one of the first communities to use this technology.”

The system was imposed, without parental input, by the school as a way to simplify attendance-taking and potentially reduce vandalism and improve student safety. Principal Earnie Graham hopes to eventually add bar codes to the existing ID’s so that students can use them to pay for cafeteria meals and check out library books.

But some parents see a system that can monitor their children’s movements on campus as something straight out of Orwell.

“There is a way to make kids safer without making them feel like a piece of inventory,” said Michael Cantrall, one of several angry parents who complained. “Are we trying to bring them up with respect and trust, or tell them that you can’t trust anyone, you are always going to be monitored and someone is always going to be watching you?”

Cantrall said he told his children, in the 5th and 7th grades, not to wear the badges. He also filed a protest letter with the board and alerted the ACLU.

Principal puzzled by reaction Graham, who also serves as the superintendent of the single-school district, told the parents that their children could be disciplined for boycotting the badges — and that he doesn’t understand what all their angst is about.

“Sometimes when you are on the cutting edge, you get caught,” Graham said, recounting the angry phone calls and notes he has received from parents.

Each student is required to wear identification cards around their necks with their picture, name and grade and a wireless transmitter that beams their ID number to a teacher’s handheld computer when the child passes under an antenna posted above a classroom door.

Graham also asked to have a chip reader installed in locker room bathrooms to reduce vandalism, although that reader is not functional yet. And while he has ordered everyone on campus to wear the badges, he said only the 7th- and 8th-grade classrooms are being monitored thus far. CONTINUED

Righteous Fist

2005-02-11 04:07 | User Profile

Yeh, thats no good. Thanks for the heads up.

[QUOTE] Principal puzzled by reaction Graham, who also serves as the superintendent of the single-school district, told the parents that their children could be disciplined for boycotting the badges — and that he doesn’t understand what all their angst is about.

“Sometimes when you are on the cutting edge, you get caught,” Graham said, recounting the angry phone calls and notes he has received from parents. [/QUOTE]

Indeed, the public school system on the cutting edge of social experiments. As usual.