Schools as Prisons

One of my academic responsibilities is supervising student teachers.  Student teachers are just what the name implies – university students learning to become teachers.  Typically, student teachers work with a veteran teacher at an area school over the course of a semester, ultimately assuming all facets of a full-time professional teacher.  Part of my job involves observing student teachers teaching a lesson in the classroom.  Lately, however, fulfilling this obligation has become increasingly onerous.  It has nothing to do with the students I supervise or the lessons they teach, but rather how schools are run.

As I arrived for a school visit recently I explained to the security personnel that greeted me who I was and the reason for my visit.  He asked to see a photo identification so I presented my university faculty id.  He asked instead for my driver’s licenses, explaining that he needed to enter my home address, telephone number, and birth date into a computer and then snap a digital photograph of me, all of which would be kept in a central database.  I explained that I was hesitant to disclose so much personal information and offered my work address and telephone.  The security person at first insisted on having my personal information but eventually accepted and entered my work information, but not before he and a nearby custodian who observed the exchange stated that all of these procedures were “for the safety of the kids.”  The implication that I was at the school to do some harm and the assumption that I do not care about student safety rankled to say the least.  I explained to both men that as a tenure-track professor at a public university, a former public high school teacher, and someone with over 20 years of experience in education, I would not be at their school if I was in anyway a threat to children.  I stated further that I am all for ensuring school safety but do not think I need to waive my privacy rights or other civil liberties to do so.  This ultimately ended the exchange and I was allowed to proceed to complete my visit and observation.

I thought about this experience again last week when I read about San Antonio’s Northside Independent School District (NISD) initiating a program requiring all students to wear identification badges embedded with radio frequency identification (RFID), enabling school personal to track students' movements.  Some students and parents complained of the new program as an invasion of privacy.  Students not complying with the program allegedly were subjected to harassment from teachers while administrators reportedly threatened to ban these students from extracurricular and other social activities.  School personnel meanwhile explained that the program was aimed at reducing truancy and promoting school safety.

I am skeptical of the district’s claim.  This program may indeed be about reducing truancy and promoting safety, but I wonder who’s safety the district has in mind that truant or absent students threaten.  The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) reports that the NISD student population is nearly 64 percent Hispanic, nearly 25 percent white, and approximately eight percent black or African American, with just over 47 percent of students eligible for federal reduced or free lunch programs.  This LoJack-type system and other technological deployments seem more about corralling poor and minority students than about anything with any pedagogical value.  It seems to be part of a troubling trend.  In her book, Lockdown High, journalist Annette Fuentes argues that legislative and policy responses to the 1999 Columbine High School shootings and similar tragic events have created police-state like conditions in many American schools.  Often school personnel implement these responses with little regard to their consequences - not the least of which is how being presumed guilty before being innocent affects the social and psychological development of children.

Using Big Brother tactics provides an easy solution to the complex problems of student truancy, absenteeism, and dropping out.  Schools would be better served by creating warm, welcoming environments staffed by caring teachers who develop interesting curricula taught with engaging learning activities and authentic assessments.  Perhaps that is too much to ask.