LOl, what an idea. Every classroom in America can have webcams and parents can log on and check out all their kids classes on their home computers.
Sounds good to me. And for those parents who don’t logon, send them a video once every two weeks of their special little snowflakes.
Would you want every thing you did in school shown to your parents?
Wow this is awful!
Cons:
I don’t want other people, strangers, NAMBLA, observing my child, learning what they wear, like and dislike.
Academic freedom of both students and teachers would be non-existent, something that is very important in secondary and post-secondary education. Parents calling up and pushing their agendas (Think of evolution vs. creationism or socialist vs. capitalist)
I might have teachers playing for the camera and the Parents, hoping to avoid or at least minimize criticism from home, instead of focusing on involving and educating students. I don’t know if there is a conflict there but it might be worth considering.
“Greater control of bullying” and “classroom behavior likely to improve”
Clearly this is out-of-touch, have you seen the incidents of bullying and harassment that kids post on YouTube, MySpace, Facebook? If anything, kids inclined to act like turds will be even worse for the cameras in the hope of gaining an audience.
Oh yea, how do you plan on paying for this? Taxes? Unless you can tie it into a football/sports budget line most local school districts would vote it down.
This is gonna get creepy when the “Guilty/Not Guilty” crowd weighs in!
Cons: I don’t see any?
You’ve got to be kidding? What about pediphiles obtaining access to children? How about bully parents using subtle small issues during the year to beat teachers over the head with? How about a child/student staging an incident to be put on Youtube? Or staging an incident to get a teacher fired? I could go on, but I’m not sure it would make any difference if you couldn’t think of these things in the first place.
No. And hell no.
From a teacher’s perspective, I welcome the use of cameras in the classroom. In fact, I would beg for them if it would help to get them in the classroom. There would be no need for the annual formal “evaluations”, the principal could monitor the classroom at anytime. Students would be on their best behavior; it would cut down on the incidents of threats and violence by students in my middle and high school classes. In the event the students get used to the cameras and begin acting out, the parents can see for themselves how their little darlings really act in school.
Terrible idea. Part of growing up is not being supervised by mommy and daddy every second of the day and learning to fend for yourself.
Very creepy and Orwellian. Even creepier are some of the responses on this thread thinking this is a good idea. Is this still Free Republic or did this site get taken over by Communists while I was sleeping?
I like this idea. I doubt that many, if any, parents would spend the entire day watching their kids and teacher on camera, but a teacher and classroom knowing that at any particular time it is possible that they may observed might keep students and teachers a little more in line. I know that when I was teaching I was a little more careful and more professional when I was being observed (in person, whether by the headmaster, a parent or other teachers) than I might have been otherwise. As a student I might have behaved a little better knowing that I my parents (or someone else’s) might be watching me at any particular time.
Pedophiles could get no greater information by viewing these cameras (assuming that they would have access) than they could get by simply sitting in their cars outside the school and watching the kids. I think that concern is overblown.
There have been some comments about academic freedom being somehow infringed by the presence of cameras. I don’t get that one. Teachers and students are no more or less free to express themselves if cameras are present, unless the point is to be able to express oneself without others knowing about it. What might one want to express in a classroom that one wouldn’t want anyone else to know about? Couldn’t the teacher or others in the class tell anyone they wanted to outside of the class? Or is the concern that what goes on in the classroom might be ACCURATELY communicated to others, so that deniability is eliminated?
These cameras might provide some comfort to some parents as to what is going on in class. They might serve as an obstacle to some of the outrageous actions by teachers and students we hear about in class. Finally, the presence of the cameras might provide for evidence of wrongful actions in the classroom that might otherwise go unpunished because a teacher could not see what happened and students afraid to tell on others.
I could be persuaded otherwise by sound arguments, however.