The too-too-ordinary minds who run public high schools continue to imagine that tech can force kids to school and force them to learn in the absence of large cadres of engaging teachers, curricula, and personal, small-scale management models. Schools have tried all sorts of foolish, no-to-low-to-hi-tech methods to haul
The Uninterested to the day-in-and-out
Uninteresting custody of largely
painfully
Uninteresting and
Uninterested adults.
Hapless Truant Officers, seen as sad, sad jokes even in so-sincere, serene-to-the-point-of-comatose Norman Rockwell picket-fenced hamlets eventually surrendered to equally hilarious School Attendance Officers to universally-loathed Assistant Principals for Attendance, to Vice-Principals' Secretaries' Daily Attendance Phone Calls, to now fairly universal RoboCalls (which get more parental interest for their comic value than any Assistant Principal ever did), to the highest of hi-tech nonsense now being fiddled with in ... Brazil?
Yes, Brazil.
As the Associated Press reports,
Twenty-thousand students in 25 of Vitoria da Conquista's schools 213 public schools started using T-shirts with [computer] chips this week. By 2013 all of the city's 43,000...students will be using them. The chips send a text message to the cellphones of parents when their children enter the school or alert the parents if their
children haven't arrived twenty minutes into the school day. The Brazilian city has put close to three quarters of a million dollars into its Tees-'N-Chips project.
Now, should this be, finally, at long last, The Answer, I'll do a dance and applaud the nation. I'm skeptical, though, of Tech-Solutions to the Terminally Uninteresting. It's tougher to hire and to retain and to pay well the best possible human magnets for young minds and souls and even tougher to cashier the Uninterested Adults, the parasites who plague our children in schools -- and, sure, in too many homes, as well -- the world over. Yet those of us serious about our kids and what they learn and learn how to do have know that you do not overturn the non-attendance paradigm with hi-tech T-Shirts.
You have to know that U.S. school boards will, in time, and in lieu of and yet announced as, thoughtful reform, ape this inanity.
Rah.
Rah.
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Comments
1) American public schools are pretty bad; 2) their own kids' schools are pretty good.
A guaranteed lifetime job does not an engaged employee make. Tenure for faculty is ridiculous and should be abolished. Also those stupid tests. Get the staff engaged in their work and watch the wonders that will happen.
It seems to me it's an attempt to get school admins off a hook.
HUGGGGGGGGG
(More money, however, would be nice but I doubt that'll happen).
That whole t-shirt thing is creepy. I’d never want such a high-tech electronic device next to my teenager’s skin for such a long period of time.
I worked in a poor district, but when smart boards came out, the superintendent bought them for some. No $$ spent on professional development, but buy the technology. Kind of the same way I have bought exercise equipment assuming I'd get in shape by forking out the dollars. So I won't be surprised when this NEW technology is tauted as the latest cure for absenteeism.
After almost 40 years in the system, I must agree that it is sad but true that we are failing our children. To be sure, there are bright spots, glowing spots. There are still inspired and inspiring teachers and a few schools may actually be wonderful, but overall, we are cheating the young.
****
This post is dedicated to my former teacher Mr. Black who showed me the wonders of the world of math and the humor of the world at large. RIP, dude. Thanks for changing my world for the better.
There's something sort of Zen about the question. The answer, of course, is: Imbed the chip in the student's T-shirt.
And, by the way, Jan and Aureole are right - the kids will game this system so fast their heads will spin.
Oh, pah-leeeez.....
I teach debate part time on the weekends for 2 hours every Saturday to 10 kids. They adore me and they learn alot. I've been doing this for over a year.
Regardless, I'm not qualified to teach debate in a public or private school. (Even though I debated in high school and college and did moot court, trial team) and have 20 real trials under my belt.
I need a "certificate" from an accredited school and a license, which will cost me.
I'd like to see a school board consider that kind of policy vs. the current lowest denominator, "every kid left behind" crap that makes the good kids hate school. (Like mine = they are literally begging to be homeschooled because they are bored to tears)
substantial.
And, supposing some kids is forever cutting classes, sanctions on the kid or the parents will require proving that the kid's not at school, which will require more effort than a print-out proving the absence of a special tee-shirt.
And by now I'm sure others have pointed it out but just in case: we all know that any middle school student body worth its salt had many places set up around the school to stash those shirts while they took off before the shirts were all handed out. What a silly, money wasting idea.
I spent my last two years of HS in Montgomery County. They actually did a decent job.