San Antonio is doing this in the name of school “safety”. Like all other questionable programs, parents are coaxed into accepting them because it’s for the “good of their children.”
Data Collection and Privacy
In these modern times data privacy is an important issue. With assessments, assignments, evaluations, and resumes all done through the internet, where does all that information go? Who has access to it?
The SCANS Report of 1992 promoted a “lifelong resume” which would follow a person from his school days throughout the rest of his life. Now, with the push for early education, a child’s school days would possibly start from his birth. Is this what we want?
The disturbing education issue that is not being mentioned in the media or by policy makers is the massive amount of personal information that will be collected on every child, all in the name of “education.” Ultimately, the government will have archived massive amounts of personal information about every person from birth.
The federal law “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) required that ALL children must be proficient in math and language arts by 2014. It was a noble goal, but it was unrealistically naive. Now states want relief…..
In Communist China, the government keeps data files on each of the ordinary citizens. Unfortunately, that system is well underway to being created here in the USA too.
It looks like the novel 1984 wasn’t fiction. Big Brother really is watching. A school district in Pennsylvania issued students laptops and then spied on them by remotely activating the cameras.
It is costly, intrusive, threatens our freedoms and is funded by several levels of the government. This was written before 2001. Now,about a decade later, the programs’ names have been changed, and online education and data collection is so ubiquitous that we are becoming desensitized (or resigned) to this intrusion.