School becomes more like prison: Ankle bracelets to keep track of kids who ditch class?
Posted on August 24th, 2008. Categorized under High School, News2 Comments
In San Antonio, Texas, a school is trying out new ankle bracelets for students who have been caught ditching class or who have had discipline problems, it seems. The bracelet will monitor them using the GPS system, so authorities will be able to track where the kids are round-the-clock.
Students will not be able to remove the bracelet for up to six months.
This is terrible. What right does the school have to know where a kid is all hours of the day? Everybody needs privacy, and being forced to be monitored around the clock for something as tame as skipping a day of class is just pathetic. Privacy is valuable to everyone, and to know that someone could be watching you all the time just shows the sad direction we’ve been heading in discipline for some time now.
Not only is it a civil liberty question, this policy also won’t really benefit the student. What happens when these kids go to college or get a job? They aren’t going to have an ankle bracelet there, and they’ll be free to skip class or bail on work whenever they want to. The best way to help to start good habits about attending class is to create relevant punishments — perhaps they can’t turn in their work from that day they missed, perhaps they can’t take the test when they come back, etc. The punishment needs to relate to the class itself, and it should definitely not infringe on a student’s privacy.
The only time I can see this measure being logical is when the student’s whereabouts are a matter of safety to other students. As a punishment, it’s not at all effective. Along with making kids wear prison jumpsuits for violating the dress code, this seems to be yet another way to associate students with prisoners. Students go to school to learn how to be adults, not to be watched over like criminals.
What do you think? Is this going too far or is there a good reason to resort to GPS ankle bracelets?
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September 30th, 2008 at 6:17 am
Well it was only a matter of time when this would happen, the day has come and we approach one step closer to all being monitored by our government.