Cameras in classrooms

When students in Biloxi, Miss., show up this morning for the first day of the new school year, a virtual army of digital cameras will be recording every minute of every lesson in every classroom.

Hundreds of Internet-wired video cameras will keep rolling all year long, in the hope that they’ll deter crime and general misbehavior among the district’s 6,300 students — and teachers.

You know, I’m honestly not sure what I think of this. On the one hand, the “Big Brother” aspect of constant video surveillance creeps me out, in a big way. On the other hand, when used effectively, I could see there being some really strong advantages to the technology.

The USA Today article about this is actually surprisingly good, too (is USA Today getting better? I’ve always seen them as the ‘lowest common denominator’ of news. Anyway…).

“It helps honest people be more honest,” says district Superintendent Larry Drawdy, who, along with principals and security officers, can use a password to view classrooms from any computer. In an emergency, police also can tune in.

This is one of the quotes that creeps me out, and I think it’s entirely the wrong attitude to take. If you’re planning on using the cameras to supervise the teachers or students, then just admit it — but trying to put a false positive spin through ridiculous statements like this just raises my hackles. I like to think that I’m a fairly honest person, but a camera isn’t going to help me be more honest. It’s not going to encourage me to be less honest, either. It’s just there, and a mild annoyance.

Though Biloxi’s camera system hasn’t captured serious crimes, Drawdy says it has “prevented a lot of things from happening”…

Another ridiculously empty statment. What has it prevented? Well, we don’t know, because we prevented it. But if the cameras weren’t there, it would have been hell! I swear it! Ugh. I don’t suppose Drawdy learned his PR skills from the Bush administration’s WMD search?

Webcams have popped up in a few Defense Department schools on U.S. military bases, allowing soldiers deployed overseas to look in on their children’s classrooms and even chat via two-way setups. Teachers in London are calling for Webcams in every classroom so parents can see children’s behavior from home.

This is another aspect that gives me the willies. Aren’t kids ever allowed to be out of the eyes of their parents? How are children ever supposed to learn how to interact with each other, with other adults, with the world in general, if they’re not allowed to do so on their own? Today’s society seems so absurdly obsessed with constantly micro-managing every last little aspect of their children’s lives (from cameras in classrooms to playgrounds that, while harmless, are also uniformly bland and boring) that kids don’t ever have a chance to be kids anymore. Sure, they’re going to screw up, get a few bruises, butt heads, and be little shits every so often. But they’re kids. That’s the point. They’ve got to learn, and they’ve got to have some freedom in order to do that.

“I’m there to work; I’m there to do my job,” says R. Scott Page, an earth science and photography teacher at Hanford High School in Richland, Wash. “I don’t have a problem with somebody seeing that I’m doing my job.”

Page, a former biology teacher, granted open access to anyone who wanted to view his classroom, no password required. He says families tuned in regularly and loved it. “You could see if the kid was wearing the same thing they left the house in that morning.”

Page often focused the camera on lab experiments so he and students could monitor them over the weekend. Students would log on when they were home sick, sending messages with questions.

“Any way that you can increase communication between home and school, you’re going to help students,” Page says. “That’s what it’s all about.”

Most of what this teacher has to say I like. I’m put off by the suggestion on checking up on the kid’s clothing, but the rest of it is exactly what I think could be good about the availability of classroom cameras. Rather than just shoving the camera in a corner to be an ever-present watchful eye, he incorporated them into his teaching. Monitoring experiments over the weekend from home, letting students who are home sick participate virtually via webcam and IM — these are excellent examples of how to use technology in teaching.

All in all, I guess that’s a lot more cons than pros, isn’t it? Maybe I’m not so undecided on how I feel about this, though I’m not quite ready to commit to a solid stance. I guess it would come down to how any particular administration and teacher dealt with the technology. If it’s simply a Big Brother-style surveillance system, I have serious issues with it. But if a teacher can use the technology to the advantage of the class, that I can support.

Unfortunately, that may be an uncomfortably big “if”.

(via /.)