This post has a pretty chilling list of invasions of student privacy:
The increasing use of student surveillance and intrusion of school districts into students’ extra-curricular conduct should alarm us all. Whether it is a district surveilling students in their bedrooms via webcam, conducting random drug or locker searches, strip-searching students, lowering the standard for searching students to “reasonable suspicion” from “probable cause,” disciplining students for conduct outside of school hours, searching their cellphones and text messages, or allegedly forcing them to undergo pregnancy testing, student privacy is under increasing threat.
Glenn Greenwald’s gloss on this is “children are being trained to give up all privacy, and to be good, dutiful Surveillance State citizens, through constant, pervasive surveillance in schools.”
While children are learning to tolerate more surveillance, I don’t think that our current society is set up for kids to be completely dutiful. The drinking age is now 21 everywhere, smoking pot is still more-or-less illegal, and the downloading of media (music or movies) can come with bigger fines than smoking a joint. Teenagers still engage in all of these activities, and in order to do so, they’re sneaking around. There may be more surveillance, but the need to evade it is as strong as ever, and I have faith that the desire to smoke a joint, drink a beer or download a pirated movie will trump whatever indoctrination occurs in the schools.
Just to be clear: I think the increasing criminalization of adolescence is outrageous – I’m just observing how things are, not how I wish they were.
Linda Featheringill
The increasing “criminalization of adolescence” as you put it is disturbing.
On the other hand, teenagers are more dangerous than they were 20 years ago.
I don’t know what the answer is.
cleek
i sit here at work knowing full well that everything i type and everything i send through the internet is monitored. i know all my purchases are monitored. i know the bank watches my credit cards and accounts for activity they don’t like. i know there are cameras on the corners, cameras in stores, cameras in public places. i know telephone calls are monitored. i know if i want to make a purchase that isn’t tracked, i have to use cash, but i’ll still be tracked on the stores video cameras. i know if the government suspects me of anything that they can place surveillance equipment in my home. i have no expectation of privacy in this country. nobody should.
welcome to the world, kiddies.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Linda Featheringill: How exactly are teenagers “more dangerous” now than they were 20 years ago?
someguy
I ask myself whether it’d be appropriate to subject the traders of Goldman Sachs to this regimen, and finding I’d be okay with that, think it’s okay that punk kids are subject to it as well.
Speaking of kids… get off my lawn! Hoodlums…
John S.
I was a teenager 20 years ago. I don’t think the teenagers of today are “more dangerous”, but I do think the world they live in is far more complicated and dangerous, and they are trying to adapt.
I actually give a lot of credit to this upcoming generation. They seem to have far more tolerance and liberal tendencies than my generation, which has turned out to be a nest of conservative teabaggers.
Scott
I’ve long been glad that I got out of school when I did. I was a cartoonishly good kid, and I do think I would’ve ended up expelled or in jail nowadays for doing stuff that no one blinked an eye at when I was in high school in the ’80s.
Back in the day, I was on a huge Agatha Christie kick, read all of her novels, got to “Ten Little Indians,” and loved it so much, I drew up a big ol’ plan for how I would’ve killed off everyone in my English class if I’d been the killer from that book. On top of that, I was writing horror stories and sending them to magazines, reading tons of Stephen King books, and basically fit the Bullied Nerd profile that all the teachers and admins seem to loathe now.
Teachers and principals are definitely crazier and more dangerous than any of the kids are now…
RSR
Also, many people think these searches and surveillance are just happening to the ‘bad’ kids or the ‘brown’ kids–you know, ‘the others.’
Oh, but when it happens to a nice white kid from the high-median income suburbs? Then, well then, wow, you’re on the national news.
But regarding cell phones: I understand that kids have them, but they should be stored away all day in school lockers. They are complete and utter distractions in the classroom at best, and a catalyst for aggressive and possible criminal acts at worst.
Chyron HR
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
Kids these days, they got the Pokey and the Mans and the Cop Killer zibba-zaboo-hey.
peach flavored shampoo
The tighter they’re held/watched/ruled in HS, the more crazy, stupid, insane they become once they’re in college, IMO. The black-to-white transformation from no privacy, no independence to considerable privacy and complete independence may shock these students in ways that will lead to bad things.
Linda Featheringill
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
Teenagers more dangerous:
They are causing more physical damage and even death to each other than they used to.
Actual numbers would be nice. If you can show that I am wrong, I would be very, very happy to retract my statement.
wilfred
You need some historical context. The surveillance state is the technological realization of the Panopticon. Normative standards for what’s acceptable or not follow the implementing of technological controls.
Adolescence was invented at the end of the 19th Century. Criminalizing began almost at the same time.
Mumphrey
My friends and I had a fun time in the middle to late 1980s dropping watermelons from a 100 foot high railroad trestle west of Philadelphia that commuter trains ran across. I wonder how that would go over today…
How can schools defend peeping into some kid’s bedroom? What do they do when they undress? Punish them for indecent exposure? What he hell? This is the first time I’d heard about that, and I can tell you that if I found out that a school was doing that to my daughter when she got to middle school or high school (she’s only 3 now), I’d raise hell with the school. I’d think hard about suing them. What right do they have leering into some 16 year old’s bedroom?
As for the cell phones–I’d just as soon that they banned them from school. Seems like they’d be a bad distraction in class, and if the students didn’t bring them to school, then the school wouldn’t have any need to snoop in them. If I have anything to say about it, our child won’t be taking a telephone to school…
WereBear
Is it the parents demanding the school do things that schools are not supposed to do? Or is the schools being paranoid that they will be held responsible?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Linda Featheringill: Teenagers are absolutely not “more dangerous” than they were twenty years ago. The stats at this site only go back to the early 90’s, but they still show a dramatic decline in school related violence and crime. Youth crime in general is also down since the early nineties.
Stop spreading bullshit.
EDIT:@Linda Featheringill:
That is completely untrue. Please take a look at the numbers I googled up in five seconds before spreading more fear-mongering lies.
Face
Pretty sure that’s not how it works. You cant flamethrow, then demand somebody shoots it down. You made the accusation; you provide the data, not the other way around.
Walker
@Linda Featheringill:
Huh? I remember the gang violence at the poorer schools in my area in the 80s. Even at the flagship schools, there was rampant drug-dealing. I haven’t seen anything these days that would lead me to believe students are more dangerous.
As for the cell phones, they may be a distraction, but if you are requiring networked laptops in class (as some schools do), you will have exactly the same problems.
Sir Nose'D
I can’t help myself, but this piece seems to be a nice companion:
Why Johnny Can’t Dissent.
Its over a decade old but it rings just as true today.
jwb
@Linda Featheringill: Babyboomers are by far the most violent generation ever. Actual numbers would be nice. If you can show that I am wrong, I would be very, very happy to retract my statement.
upyernoz
i think you are missing part of greenwald’s point. in a lot of different contexts, the law prohibits the government from probing into things for which there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy”. the idea is that by exposing kids to less privacy as they grow up, their expectations of privacy will be lowered. that increases the surveillance powers of the state.
Ian Sammis
@Linda Featheringill:
That’s not how argument works–if you’re going to make a statement, it’s your job to prove it.
Given that twenty years ago gang violence was near its peak, I suspect very strongly that you’re wrong.
Here’s another source commenting that the murder rate among black teens is about one-third the rate of 1990.
Do have any actual evidence for your claim?
WereBear
@peach flavored shampoo: Yep. Catholic high school girls in trouble.
jwb
@Ian Sammis: “Do have any actual evidence for your claim?”
Evidence! Get off my lawn, that’s why!
Macsenmifune
I think liability drives these policies. The University I went to instituted punishment for students that were arrested off campus. This happened because a fraternity at a frat house off of the campus killed one of their pledges. Kid drank himself to death, and parents sued the school. Its like schools have been sued into stupidity.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
All these facts and numbers are confusing. You can’t trust those things! I know in my heart that the kids of today are barely restrained monsters, unlike the sweet angels who grew up during the crack and street gang explosions.
I blame Facebook, because those damn kids are always on it. Cell phones, too! Starbucks! Blargle largle!
Lee
[Citation Needed]
I’m 45 and there is no way teenagers today are doing the insane crap I use to do. I’m surprised I survived.
Face
Security related; cant wait to find out what “comment” allowed them to dump nine passangers.
And yet still let them fly the next day…WTF?
Gin & Tonic
@WereBear:
Um, link, please? This sounds like an interesting video.
Keith G
While it is true, Linda, that on average 16-24 yr olds are the age group with the highest involvement with criminal activity, I have not seen breakout stats for violent crime. Nor have I seen evidence that the current cohort is demonstrability more violent then any of its predecessors.
burnspbesq
@upyernoz:
I get Greenwald’s point. I think he’s full of it, in time-honored Greenwaldian fashion, conjuring up a Grand Conspiracy out of whole cloth.
Greenwald’s a lawyer. Presumably he knows how to make a FOIA request. Someday I’d like to see him do some real reporting (like, among others, Scott Horton) instead of assuming that the worst thing he can imagine must be reality.
WereBear
@Gin & Tonic: The movie is the satirical classic, Kentucky Fried Movie. It’s a parody title; but you do get to see the trailer!
However, it’s a true syndrome: Catholic High School syndrome.
We actually took our daughter out of a Catholic primary school to start public school in junior high. It was a good public school system academically; sent kids to excellent colleges, and she was academically gifted.
But she was also on the shy side; we didn’t want her going to a girls only school. Meeting boys for the first time when she was a sheltered freshman in college? Nuh uh!
She was unhappy at first; but during high school, when her old friends did nothing but complain about their school, and shared horror stories, she realized we had been right.
My first husband (now deceased) had grown up around Catholic school kids; and knew.
Persia
@Scott: I can beat that– our entire high school yearbook was a murder mystery where we’d ‘killed off’ our class advisors. The day we distributed the yearbook we held an assembly and had the two teachers laid out on tables, with yellow crime scene tape everywhere.
We probably would’ve all gotten psych evaluations if we’d come up with it nowadays.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@burnspbesq: Only a deranged conspiracy freak would see any connection between the way children are treated in school and their attitudes as adults.
Gin & Tonic
@WereBear: That was a joke.
But I went to Catholic high school. Didn’t subject my kids to that, so I completely understand.
jrg
In 2005, a stray gamma ray burst from the sun entered our upper atmosphere and changed the genetics of everyone under 13 to pre-dispose them to violent criminal activity.
I don’t have a link, but I’ll bet no one else can show me proof that this didn’t happen.
Tone In DC
The national violent crime rate has been decreasing for about 20 years. Here’s a table showing the trend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Violent_Crime_Rate.jpg
The property crime rate has been dropping for years, as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Property_Crime_Rate.jpg
What I think is happening is: CNN, CourtTV and other TV networks have to fill those hours of news programming with something. And good news (unless it’s a plane landing on the Hudson River, or repairs being done on the Hubble telescope) does not sell. So, they show bad news. Much of it revolving around violent crime. Like Chandra Levy and the DC snipers.
With apologies to Pete Townsend, the vast majority of the kids are alright. Their parents (and grandparents) are simply paranoid from watching too much TV.
El Cid
A lot of these expectations of privacy were actually won quite recently, such as from the 1960s and 1970s, and we’re now going back to the completely standardized nosiness and intrusiveness of earlier periods.
In the 1940s and 1950s were there many expectations of privacy for schoolkids? Lockers or bags which went uninspected? Private notebooks or letters unread?
Carol
I think it’s all that drug war thing. After a few high-profile drug deaths, folks began to panic and let their kids be surveilled in a way that we in the early 70’s never were. Add to that the determination that the kids after us would never be so radical again, and it all added up to what we have now. Legalize weed for over 21’s and the whole surveillance thing goes away, because the gangs would go away and the need to keep kids from “destroying their future” would go away too.
rufflesinc
I’d like to see how this fits in with the conservatives’ harping of school choice and school vouchers. If students and parents could choose which school to attend, then the free market would get rid of these intrusions. Right?
burnspbesq
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
You must have a different thesaurus than me. In mine, “belief” and “fact” aren’t synonyms.
If such a conspiracy existed within the Federal Government, it would leave a paper trail a mile wide and 500 feet deep. How fucking hard is it to submit a FOIA request?
Greenwald is smart, but he’s laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy. And anyone who buys his shit unquestioningly is equally lazy.
Carol
@El Cid: I mainly remember that folks never bothered back then unless someone made a complaint about stuff in your locker. True, they could always search in the name of cleanliness or maintenance, but unless there was a complaint or the police needed to search, they weren’t to obsessed with what was in it.
That was after they called your parents at work to let them know you were misbehaving. Of course. some places let you know that if you didn’t take all of your stuff away after school was out, then the janitor could pitch stuff out while he was cleaning. So you already knew privacy was not absolute, but you learned that if you didn’t raise any hell, you could get away with storing a lot in your locker.
R-Jud
@Carol:
That’s interesting. I’ve thought this too: I graduated from HS in 1997, and I can definitely remember certain teachers ranting about how they’d be damned if they’d let us kids “get radicalized” like those damn hippies.
I don’t, however, agree that legalizing weed would make too much of a difference. They’d just fixate on something else– weapons, alcohol or other drugs, cell phones with sexy pictures– and keep tabs on kids for that.
bjacques
Considering the return of the “permanent record,” those statistics suggest today’s kids are coping pretty well. I’m glad I finished high school in 1981; “Dazed and Confused” was practically a documentary (I went to school in Galveston County, not Austin, but close enough). I finished one step ahead of the Reaganites and their successors who figured out how profitable it was to fuck over kids while hoisting college ever further out of their reach.
I love my internet and other hi-tech goodies, but if I had to go to high school again, I’d swap it all for Pong, a Dungeons & Dragons basic set and all the slack I enjoyed then.
MBunge
“Glenn Greenwald’s gloss on this is “children are being trained to give up all privacy”
Uh, has The Last Honest Man ever heard of this thing called “Facebook”? How about “Twitter”? Has he ever glanced at the kajillion reality shows featuring teens and 20somethings on TV? Kids aren’t being trained to give up all privacy. Too many of them are falling all over each other to give it away.
Mike
mclaren
Why don’t we just tell it like it is?
Schools are prisons.
Schoolkids are being trained to live in Attica. When they graduate from high school, they’ll be used to living in Attica. Sniffer dogs, personal searches, metal detectors, patdowns, strip searches, detention, lockdowns. The students will be used to it. And they’ll expect it in everyday life. And the entire nation will become Attica.
That’s the goal. That’s what we’re heading for. Those TSA patdowns aren’t about protecting anyone, they’re about turning America into a giant open-air Folsom prison.
In a few years we’ll be sitting in our apartments and a loudspeaker on the wall will blare LIGHTS OUT IN 5 MINUTES! LIGHTS OUT!
And we’ll finish our beer and strip and lean naked against the wall of our apartment and the riot-armored Department of Homeland Security cops will use their electronic passkey to open our electronically locked front door and toss our apartment, checking under our mattress and in our drawers and through the hard drive of our computer for contraband. Then they’ll give us a patdown and leave.
And the lights will turn off and all our electronics, from our computer to our TV set, will go off, and the front door of the apartment will electronically lock and we’ll go to bed in the dark. Periodically a riot-armored Department of Homeland Security cop will rattle the security bars of our apartment window and check inside with a flashlight to make sure nothing illegal is going on.
And that will be life in these United States.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@burnspbesq: I don’t know which Greenwald column we’re even talking about here. The link up top just goes to his front page, and the closest thing to a story about school surveillance I saw was this. The blockquoted bit wasn’t Greenwald, but someone named Dissent. It’s less about alleging that the Illuminati teamed up with the CIA to brainwash the children and more about pointing to a cultural shift and saying WTF.
So, where’s this Greenwald column that has you so fired up? And where does the Greenwald quote up top come from?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@MBunge:
So?
Because kids are putting a few vital stats and pics up on Facebook and making inane twitters every couple of hours… what? They’ve given up all rights to privacy?
People always, always bring up Facebook and the like when discussing the removal of any expectation of privacy. Information on Facebook was all put there willingly. It’s stuff people want to be publicly known (a few privacy settings shenanigans on FB’s part notwithstanding). That’s not really a problem.
Rampant wiretapping or intercepting email, on the other hand, are problems, and FB has nothing to do with it.
Corner Stone
And slighlty OT but this was a big part of my problem with the discussion we had the other day about airport body scanners:
Body scanners going unused at Nigeria airports
Riggsveda
Frankly, Facebook, addiction to cell phones, and any number of location apps are doing a far better job of getting kids used to having no privacy, with the advantage that they are doing it joyfully, to themselves. Even people my own age look at me with wonder and fear when I tell them I never use my cell phone except in emergencies, and always keep it off otherwise. The idea of being unavailable to any Tom Dick and Harry with a bug up his ass is simply incomprehensible to them. And the idea of not sharing intimate information with strangers seems downright suspicious.
That said, I have to note that the “school surveillance” link mentioned above involves a school district near me, and the district had no intention of spying on its students. The ill-conceived idea was to use the laptops the kids borrowed to trace the computers’ locations, because a number of them had already gone missing. The reason no further criminal action was taken was because there was no criminal intent.
kay
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
No, but I work with them and I think they’re much more accepting of a loss of privacy. Incidentally, the knuckleheads put up a lot more than a “few stats” on Facebook. Facebook is an absolute treasure trove for law enforcement.
“children are being trained to give up all privacy, and to be good, dutiful Surveillance State citizens, through constant, pervasive surveillance in schools.”
I think he has that backward.
I’m to the point where I think they’re losing the concept of privacy, or why it might be valuable to have.
kay
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Their entire contact list and history is stored in their phones, so that’s handy too.
If they have the phone they have all of their friends.
Stillwater
@kay: I’m to the point where I think they’re losing the concept of privacy, or why it might be valuable to have.
Privacy is a quaint issue, haven’t you heard? Just like those dusty old restrictions on torture.
rb
That said, I have to note that the “school surveillance” link mentioned above involves a school district near me, and the district had no intention of spying on its students. … The reason no further criminal action was taken was because there was no criminal intent.
That’s debatable at best. The IT staff bragged about being able to turn the camera on and off without the students’ knowledge, and the school used this to take pictures of students in their bedrooms and to support accusations about their behavior there (e.g. alleged drug use). Further: numerous complaints by the student council about this were not acted upon by the administration, who did nothing to disrupt the surveillance.
That prosecutors felt they didn’t have a winnable case on criminal charges changes none of these undisputed facts.
Carol
@R-Jud: Weed is the big thing though, the one thing that makes parents freak out and let their kids be searched. The gangs are another.
They are also the one things that are universal enough to justify such drastic measures. Ending the drug war would kill 90% of it, and the rest would just consist of Facebook searches.
The real thing we should be concerned about is the concept of forgiveness and the ability to delete things that are embarrassing from our permanent record. At the least we should be getting a hard shell about things that people have done before the age of 25 or so, and letting them update their lives and opinions.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@kay:
That’s true for a lot of kids, and some will have to learn the hard way to be more discreet on FB. There’s a difference between willingly sharing information online and being spied on by school, work, or government, though. I hope the youngins can appreciate this.
It seems like many people think constant surveillance isn’t worth worrying about anymore, because FB already eliminated privacy. I just don’t think that’s true. Even the kids still have their secrets.
kay
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
I have a whole elaborate theory on this that is entirely anecdotal, but informed, I think. I talk to them about it a lot, and we have really different positions on what’s public and what’s private.
I think reality television has fed into their dismissive take on privacy more than Facebook has.
I think it’s a loss. I don’t want to outlaw anything, but I think they’ve lost the idea and they might not have been old enough to know the value of what they gave away.
MBunge
“Rampant wiretapping or intercepting email, on the other hand, are problems, and FB has nothing to do with it.”
If you’re used to living your life in public, why should you care if the government is looking? It’s difficult to make a persuasive case against government surveillance in a culture where people willingly open up their lives for inspection.
Mike
MBunge
“I think the increasing criminalization of adolescence is outrageous”
I would think that the extension of adolescence out into the 20s and beyond has something to do with the increased criminalization.
Mike
George
It’s difficult to make a persuasive case against government surveillance in a culture where people willingly open up their lives for inspection.
What a stupid thing to say.
Don’t you understand the difference between voluntary and government-mandated?
sujal
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: the early 90s IS 20 years ago. :)
kay
@MBunge:
It isn’t that, though. There are simply more rules. Juveniles run into trouble not from the “first contact” but from violating terms of probation, after the first contact. A lot of their “re-offenses” spring from being arrested in the first place, for minor infractions. Once they’re in it it’s hard to keep them out of it. It can spiral ludicrously, where they start with a “threat” at school and they’re involved with one or another state agency for years, until they “age out”.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@kay: How widespread is this attitude, do you think? And do the kids make any distinction between voluntarily providing info and being monitored by authority figures?
I hope you’re wrong, but I really don’t talk to high school kids who aren’t trolling me.
Even if the youth don’t care about privacy, us old farts shouldn’t be making excuses for a surveillance state. (Not saying that’s what you’re doing, but I see it a lot.)
monkeyboy
I think one big trend behind this lack of privacy was the development of social-media / social-networking systems.
While various blogs/news groups/discussion lists/etc. existed before, I think the big breakthrough was LiveJournal (est. 1999) where members had their own blog. The true innovation was the friends list and most commenting on the individual blogs was by (or was restricted to) friends. People, particularly teenagers, found that they could become popular (as measured by number of “friends” and comment volume) and a LJ account became a must have for many. Popularity depended on posting interesting things often about one’s personal life – for some teens this could be pictures of their fashion choices, wild parties, or personal possessions. There was (and still is) LJ images (warning may be VERY NSFW) which shows recent LJ pictures, each which can be clicked to find why someone included it. This was a window into what people thought was cool or interesting. (These days LJ is Russian owned and much of its content is Russian).
The new cool has moved elsewhere several times but is still based in part on the need to expose personal details to have friends (whether they are in real life or on the net) and for many it is considered a necessity.
MBunge
“Don’t you understand the difference between voluntary and government-mandated?”
When something is regularly given away, it becomes harder to object to people taking it. For proof, look no further than how the internet has affected the thinking of many people on the question of paying for news or entertainment.
Mike
kay
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
It makes me sad because it’s like they feel this need to document everything they do. Imagine talking to one of those little kids who has been filmed essentially from birth on a reality show, in 10 years. They’re not going to have any concept of privacy at all. Why should they? The ideas behind the Fourth Amendment might be a hard sell to that crowd, and if you look at polling, they’re a hard sell now. A hell of a lot of people seem to believe that it is the DUTY of the individual to disprove any and all accusations, OR THEY STAND. I don’t see it like that.
I think these two things are tied. I think you have to have a personal notion of a private life before you get all het up about the state violating it.
MBunge
“It isn’t that, though. There are simply more rules.”
But why are there more rules?
I’m almost-but-not-quite 40 and when I was a little kid, adulthood was something you largely achieved in the eyes of society by the end of high school. Young adults, perhaps, but still adults. Even by the time I got to my teens, it was expected that you’d certainly be a grown up by at least the time you got out of college. Now, however, it seems like real adulthood is something you reach around 30, if that.
If an 18 year old is considered a grown up, how much more mature does that make a 15 year old? If a 25 year old is still considered a child, how much more childish does that make a teenager?
Mik
kay
@MBunge:
There are more rules because there is an emphasis on safety over independence. That works to a certain extent with little kids, in schools, but it falls apart with teenagers, because they are actually independent actors.
For example, strict rules on physical contact work really well with little kids, but older kids are actually older and they fight. When you were in school fighting merited maybe a suspension. Now it can be a violation of elaborate school safety measures put in place after Columbine, and you can be charged with assault. The idea is you’re a risk to the school community, rather than it being just an isolated incident, between two people. The problem is the older kids see it as between two people, where younger kids are better able to grasp the community idea.
Anonymous At Work
I think legit violence is a major concern here and should be taken seriously. However, why this is going overboard is that the people most likely to speak up for teens in these situations would be their parents, which is a messed-up dynamic. Parents want what they think is in the best interest of the child, as they perceive it. Weasel-worded for sure and on purpose. Parents, either out of concern, fear, or whatever, are at times willing to tolerate greater intrusions upon their childrens’ privacy than they would condone upon themselves by their employers. In the face of real violence, they want to unleash the full power of “The Nanny State” via the school on children, turning the legal fiction of “in loco parentis” into “at-school parents”, which denotes a much greater authority.
The Pale Scot
You asked, from the Kentucky Fried Movie
Definitely NSFW+1
Catholic high school girls in trouble
Sheila
Our ridiculously-high expectations of our children of all ages and our ridiculously-low understanding of our children of all ages is deplorable, as is the enhanced surveillance, but perhaps even as insidious are the ways in which people of all ages acquiesce to the decreased privacy in our country, from placing their entire lives online in venues such as Facebook and the blogosphere, in having private conversations in public on their cellphones, in lethargically accepting the increasingly-intrusive tracking of their consumer habits with the accompanying targeted marketing, in exposing themselves in “reality” shows (doesn’t the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle operate here so that none of these shows represent “reality” as it would be were it unobserved), etc.
Ruckus
How is the world more dangerous than 20, 40, 60, 80, whatever years ago?
Some of the dangers might be different, but so are some of the protections. Seat belts. Bike helmets. Safer cars. Polio and other vaccinations. What else has changed for the worse? Guns? Lots of guns around 20, 40, 60, 80 years ago. Drugs? Was far more open 45 years ago when I graduated HS. War? Old people have been sending young people to war for eons. Child labor? We have better laws, and attitudes about them. Health care. We may have pretty crappy insurance but more kids live better.
What is more dangerous is that we know almost instantly when something bad happens. So we can panic about it. We can be in fear of it. We don’t just read local news. I grew up with someone who is still in jail after almost 40 years for murder. How may kids are murders? I knew kids who were very destructive, who were druggies, and so on. I also knew kids who grew up to lead productive happy lives. I don’t see things being all that different. Except that they get spied upon much more than when I was a kid.
Alien-Radio
No more secrets. Guess what, the panopticon now goes BOTH ways. I’m not ashamed, I can’t be embarressed, I can’t be offended. The people who invented the panopticon and believe in it’s utility assume all of these negative emotions; when the people they’re trying to control have none of them, their psychological projection becomes plain to see and the tables are turned. We see their shame, and fear and weakness, and we LAUGH.