Texas School ID Tracking Chips Protested By Parents And Students (Huffington Post)

These past few years Texas has seemed to be at the forefront of really bad educational ideas. A couple of years ago the Republican-dominated Texas Board of Education reformed its textbook requirements to include an incredibly conservative-skewed version of American history, and in states that lack the clout or resources to make textbook manufacturers create textbooks that follow their state’s guidelines, students across the country are now learning about how good of a “leader” Jefferson Davis allegedly was. Earlier this year the Republican Party of Texas actually inserted into their platform that they were opposed to the teaching of critical thinking skills because, in Texas Republicans’ own words, those skills “have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.” Now comes this latest move, the kind of thing that can only happen in a culture where generations have grown up not reading 1984 or learning its lessons.

One of the largest problems I’ve run into in my teaching career is the flak I sometimes get for creating egalitarian structures in my classes, giving students as much of a voice, and as much power, as I can, while still adhering to the objectives of the class. The common criticism I get is that in the “real world” students should expect to be put into harsher and more hierarchical power structures, and I should be preparing my students for this “real world.” This kind of goes back to the whole argument over whether schools should only prepare students for jobs, or help them also with the other problems they encounter outside of the spheres of school and work, a subject with enough arguments and considerations to fill several books. Even if we were to accept as fact that the “real world” is a cruel and harsh place, though — and I can think of several institutions, both private and public, that easily prove that assertion false — it does not necessarily follow the world has to be cruel and harsh.

When you don’t teach that something can be changed, you are teaching, by your silence, that it can’t be changed and has to be tolerated, no matter how awful or just plain wrong it is. This is where so much conservative rhetoric about education stems from, because like with so many other things, conservatives want to put their ideas above reproach or even criticism. Teaching children an incredibly myopic conservative version of history is just one way to shut out the idea that liberals and liberal ideas might have some positive contribution to make to America and the world; stopping students from learning critical thinking skills would deny them the very means by which they might challenge these ideas. If our future generations are to improve on what we’ve done by more than merely mechanical ways — there is not, and never will be, an app for real human freedom — then it is imperative that young people are exposed to a variety of different situations and ideas, and given the tools with which they can make informed, well-thought-out decisions for themselves and those they may have influence over.

Making schoochildren carry cards that send tracking information to their school 24 hours a day is merely an extension of conservatives’ attempts to remodel every aspect of American society into their dystopian vision. (As has been evidenced by other recent cases, some schools already seem to think they have the right to control their students’ behaviour outside of school and school functions.) It was bad enough when we found out that some school-issued laptops included software that let the school spy on students and their families through the laptops’ webcams, but at least those laptops probably weren’t on every hour of the day. Now school administrators are insisting on being able to effectively track students every hour of the day, and if there’s any aspect of the “real world” this seems to be designed to acclimate students to, it’s prison. That probably shouldn’t be a surprise, since conservatives have been behind the growing privatization of the prison industry, then legislating in a way to try to get the industry as many “customers” as possible. (This is pretty much the primary reason why there’s no real discussion of legalizing marijuana despite more Americans now being for legalization than against it.)

Turning back to the “real world” concept for a moment, it’s unfortunately true that we are living in a culture where we’re being monitored to a greater extent each and every day. Part of this may stem back to the post-09.11 calls by conservatives for Americans to be more vigilant in reporting one another’s activities to law enforcement at the first suspicion of anything illegal, but for the most part it’s just a consequence of the past decade of technological advances. In an era where so many of us carry cell phones in our pockets that can double as camcorders, it’s hard not to feel worried about what you say and do outside the confines of your home becoming broadcast to the whole world. (Even inside your home you could be “bugged” easily; I taped over the lens of the webcam built into my laptop just in case malware gets through that turns on the webcam and sends its images elsewhere.) My father liked to utter the old saying about how college is “the last time in your life when you’re allowed to make mistakes,” but I’m not sure that’s so true any longer. Back in the day you could go to a friend’s party and take a few hits off of a bong without any worry, but now one of your friends could be taking a picture that winds up on Facebook, where another of your friends tags your face, and once something gets posted online it’s pretty much impossible to take it down; that image could wind up haunting you even decades later when you’re out looking for a job and some human resources snoop googles your name and that picture pops up. (This is just one of the reasons I’m glad I never did drugs, even back when no one had cameras in their cell phones.)

Thanks to the boom in “reality television” the past fifteen years, there’s a certain romanticism about the whole “Big Brother” thing in our culture; heck, that’s the title of one of the most enduring shows worldwide. Maybe the Texas administrators who put this RFID card idea into place were counting on some of that rubbing off on students and parents, but for those of us who’ve seen the “shows” young people put on YouTube with their webcams, it’s painfully obvious that most people aren’t nearly as interesting as they think, and it’s far better to go on living a more interesting life than following the (greatly fictionalized, in all likelihood) exploits of other “real” people. (I’m really hoping the .musecast isn’t one of those kinds of shows, but I’m guessing lots of people would argue otherwise.) Besides, unless you’re following NORAD’s tracking of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, watching that kind of tracking is only marginally more interesting than watching grass grow.

Educators — both teachers and administrators — say a lot of unsaid things to students by the curricula they implement and the other actions they take. By making students carry around cards with RFID chips that track their movements all hours of the day, these Texas educators are telling their students to expect to live in a world where their every move is monitored and they can’t make a single mistake without someone in a position of power knowing about it. As true as that may be these days with all the cell phone video recording and traffic light cameras and such out there, that doesn’t mean that it has to be that way, and if we’re not going to give young people the freedom to make some mistakes early in their lives, will these upcoming generations ever truly be free?