
 |
|
May 24, 2013
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
December 4, 2012 / 20 Kislev, 5773
Who's watching the kids? Just about everyone
By
A. Barton Hinkle
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Students in America's larger schools sometimes feel like cattle. Now officials are starting to treat them that way.
The other day a Texas judge slapped a temporary restraining on the Northside Independent School District. The district had moved to kick Andrea Hernandez out of her high school, the John Jay Science and Engineering Academy, because she wouldn't wear an RFID tag.
RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. The USDA started providing RFID ear tags to cattlemen a few years ago, the better to implement its National Animal Identification System. That program's purpose is to track the movement of sick animals to contain the spread of disease. This year the Northside district in San Antonio began issuing student ID tags with RFID chips embedded in them as part of a new Student Locator Project. About 4,200 students at John Jay and Anson Jones Middle School were issued such IDs through the pilot program. Each RFID-enabled ID has a bar code tied to the student's Social Security Number. Some of the students objected, but none of them objected as much as Hernandez did. She handed out fliers and started a petition opposing the RFID tags. For this, and for declining to wear such a tag, she was threatened with expulsion from the school. The district has made it clear that other students had better fall in line, too. According to the Charlottesville, Va.-based Rutherford Institute, which is representing Hernandez, students who don't take part in the ID program will lose access to the cafeteria, the library, and extracurricular activities. Why is the school taking such a hard line? Not for the sake of student safety John Jay High already has 200 surveillance cameras. The real reason is money: Public schools receive funding based on a head count known as average daily attendance. The higher the head count, the more money the system gets. Hence, Houston's Spring school district boasted two years ago that after introducing RFID-enabled student IDs, the system "has recovered $194,000 in Average Daily Attendance (ADA) funding that would have been lost if the district had not been able to verify the attendance of students who were at school but not in their classroom when attendance was taken." Other school systems are following suit. Austin is using GPS technology to keep track of truancy-prone kids; so are Anaheim, Calif., and Baltimore. An Illinois school district is using GPS to monitor children getting on and off the bus. In California, the Brittan Elementary School District spiked an RFID plan only after parents objected. Again, the purpose was fiscal: "The funding of schools is based on attendance," a district official said at the time. "If we are wrong for whatever reason, it means we are getting less money than we should be getting." Well. School bureaucracies may benefit from bigger budgets, but students often do not. Since 1970 federal education spending per pupil has roughly tripled, even after adjusting for inflation. Scores have barely budged. Anyway, raw cost-benefit calculations leave out the variables that critics of this brave new world find so disturbing: the invasiveness, the creepy authoritarian vibe, and the impersonal, de-personalizing posture of monitoring enthusiasts. In an education "Trend Report," AT&T, which sells RFID technology, gushes that RFID "helps retailers track merchandise" and "lets libraries manage their book collections. … By affixing tags to such high-value assets as laptop computers and overhead projectors, schools can keep the devices secure. . . . By asking teachers to carry or wear (RFID) tags as badges, schools can automatically clock them in and out. . . . (AT&T's solution is) scalable enough to be used to track tens of thousands of assets." Merchandise, projectors, human beings they're all just assets. Things. Not all school monitoring programs are so impersonal. Some get very personal indeed. Students across the country have gotten in trouble for disrespectful but non-threatening posts on Twitter and Facebook even when they made those posts from home and on their own time. One Illinois district paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle a lawsuit filed after parents learned school officials were using webcam-enabled laptop computers issued by the district to spy on students at home. At least those families objected. Others apparently have not in Missouri, where the Parkway district has issued hundreds of fitness monitors to record elementary school pupils' heart rates, sleep patterns, calories burned, and so forth all in the name of combating obesity. Teachers will be able to see the data to monitor pupils' progress. Two school systems in New York have started similar programs. Even if Andrea Hernandez wins her case, it probably won't turn back this tide of creeping Big Brother-ism. After all, as Northside School District spokesman Pascual Gonzalez told Wired magazine, "the kids are used to being monitored." The remark, sad but true, lends credence to a sardonic bumper-sticker you may have seen. "School lasts 13 years," it reads, "because that's how long it takes to break a child's spirit."
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
A. Barton Hinkle is Deputy Editor of the Editorial Pages at Richmond Times-Dispatch
Comment by clicking here.
Previously:
• 11/29/12: The Real Middle-Class Champion was Mocked and Opposed
• 11/26/12: It's time to cut a deal on the budget
• 11/20/12: The case for a carbon tax
• 11/15/12: Cue the hysterics. Reports of Democracy's Death Greatly Exaggerated
• 11/07/12: The $4,000 Trash Can: We need regulation, but not this much
• 10/23/12: The Ballad of Islamist Rage Boy
• 10/17/12: Undermining the values that enable people in poverty to escape it? Sadly, yes
• 10/11/12: How Much Is This Tax Cut Gonna Cost Me, Doc?
• 10/04/12: Warrantless spying skyrockets under Obama
• 08/20/12: The wrong side absolutely must not win
• 08/14/12: America was not built on dirt alone
• 08/02/12: Libs Discover Their Inner Cheney
• 07/30/12: Feds want to help you --- whether you want help or not
• 07/23/12: Barack Obama, Storyteller-in-Chief
• 07/23/12: Nation's worst outsourcer? You
• 07/19/12: Listen up, America: You need to knuckle under
• 07/12/12: Obama, Romney: As Different as Two Peas in a Pod
• 07/05/12: Are teenagers big children --- or little adults?
• 06/25/12: Minorities treated as mere numbers
• 06/21/12: Memo to the the Little Guy: Seemingly innocuous activity could bring the federal hammer down out of a clear blue sky
• 06/19/12: We mustn't let America be buffaloed
• 05/31/12: Drop and Give Uncle Sam 20
• 05/15/12: The feds would like to know if you enjoyed that video
• 05/03/12: Obama inspires: 'America --- Still Not as Bad Off as Venezuela!'
• 04/26/12: It's everyone's favorite time of year again
• 03/29/12: GOP disillusionment is a good thing
• 03/27/12: Just what America needs: more red tape
• 03/20/12: Nation wondering: what happening to language?
• 02/21/12: Culture warriors resort to propaganda
• 02/15/12: Step away from that cookie and grab some air
• 02/08/12: Lessons in heresy
• 02/01/12: Do We Really Need Pickle-Flavored Potato Chips?
• 01/11/12: Shut up, they explained
• 12/30/11: A Modest Proposal: Let's Ban All Sports!
• 12/26/11: A Christmas letter from the Obamas
• 02/24/11: Will the next Watson need us?
• 12/24/10: Here Are Some Good Gifts for People You Hate
• 06/15/10: The Presinator
• 05/26/10: More than equal
• 04/08/10: Angry Right Takes a Page From Angry Left but guess who is ugly?
• 02/16/10: Either Obama owes George W. Bush an apology, or he owes the rest of us a very good explanation for his about-face on wiretapping
• 02/03/10: Talkin' to us 'tards
• 01/27/10: I never thought I'd see the day when progressives would howl in ragebecause the Supreme Court said government should not ban books
• 01/07/10: Gun-Control Advocates Play Fast and Loose
• 12/31/09: Nearly everything progressives say about neoconservative interventionism abroad applies to their own preferred policies at home
© 2011, A. Barton Hinkle
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|