Concerning Proposals To Place Cameras In School Classrooms

Photo by Lauri Veerde, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Were I granted absolute power over the citizens of the United States of America my subjects,  I would issue the following three mandates:

1. On days with an even numbered date all will drive on the right side of the road; on days with an odd numbered date all will drive on the left.
2. Only those who can sing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” pitch and word perfect will be allowed the franchise to vote.
3. Each citizen’s income tax rate will be determined by a public spin on a Press Your Luck style wheel. Chanting “no whammies!” will earn the citizen no deduction of any kind.

I propose these edicts not because I think they are in any way beneficial, but because I know them to be absurd. If some polity were so horribly misguided as to give a schlub like me autocratic powers I would consider it my vocation, my obligation to give them an object lesson in why doing so was a terrible idea to such a degree that the memory of my misrule would be passed on from generation to generation. Scary tales told to children at night to keep them on the straight and narrow, that sort of thing.

My rule wouldn’t be entirely terrible. I’d also make these policies law:

1. Daylight Savings Time is abolished.
2. The Super Bowl shall always be played on a Saturday night.
3. Universal casual Fridays.

I’d be a generally benevolent dictator.

This exercise isn’t just to expose my proclivities as a theoretical absolute monarch, but rather to emphasize the point that bad ideas, like the bad pennies of idiom, have a way of always turning up. The political divide of the twentieth century, I contend,  was not between liberals and conservatives—look at what those words meant a hundred years ago and now and tell me either is a coherent set of principles and I’ve a bridge to sell you—but a polity broken into three parts. The larger two slices have bickered with each other about the definition of progress for the last century. The third is, essentially, J.R.R. Tolkien—who, at the end of his life, was essentially what we so-called moderns might call a minarchist, distrustful of the notion of progress as a virtue—and those of like mind.

All of this is to say that some folks of what calls itself the political right have opined that putting cameras in school classrooms is a worthy objective. Such a proposition is absurd, backward, counterproductive and just the sort of thing the very proponents would decry as nigh communism were it proposed by their political enemies.

It’s dumb.

While I say this as a teacher, I’m not the only—or even most important—party to be affected.

Such a cameras in school classrooms policy is both unworkable and bad for kids.

Most years I have had at least one student who, for one reason or another, cannot be photographed. Sometimes it is simply that the parents would prefer not to have a kid appear in pictures. More often it is a question of there being some ramification for the child if someone—an errant non custodial parent, let’s say—were to find out where the student goes to school. If there’s a camera in the classroom, even one that tracks the teacher around the room, there is a high likelihood that such a student’s privacy is going to get violated.

Formal privacy aside, I can foresee a host of problems arising around the visible activities of students appearing on such cameras. Student behavior can easily be taken out of context. There are definitely times when I, as a teacher, choose to ignore a behavior for one reason or another. Sometimes intervention is not worth the effort, or may even be counterproductive—I know the kid knows he messed up when he swore under his breath and he’s had a rough day already, say—at other times the behavior may be more appropriately addressed at another time. Just today I decided not to punish a cell phone violation in class because I knew the student to be near the breaking point with anxiety over an upcoming presentation that I let it go and merely mentioned to her afterwards that I saw it and would prefer it not happen again. That the correspondent she was responding to was her mother the school board member is a separate issue entirely.

I feel like an idiot pointing out that the sky is blue in 2022 by writing the following clause, but context is important, especially in the times we are in.

If cameras enter classrooms and are publicly viewable, I guarantee that you will have YoutTube channels featuring attractive teachers in unanticipated and unwelcome compromising videos.

And that’s just the adults. Remember: there are sickos among us.

On a less disgusting, if still troubling, note, cameras in classrooms would have a direct and immediate effect on the quality of teaching, and not in a good way. Imagine your every move, word and decision analyzed and second guessed by Big Brother, in this case, potentially, that mom on Facebook who complains vehemently about absolutely everything, never with more than a third of the real facts and with the only objective of having her senseless caterwauling validated.

There was a parent on the town Facebook page recently who said something to the effect of “I guess it’s time to clear them all out.”

This is a troubling notion for several reasons. Firstly, teachers are already leaving the profession in droves. We don’t deserve a medal or a statue and many have had it worse over the last two years, but teaching has been a particularly thankless and high stress vocation during the pandemic. The burnout is real and will impact student learning, and not in a good way.

Secondly, the notion that a clean sweep—not literally, of course—is beneficial fails to even consider what those teachers are going to be replaced with: other teachers. The other teachers would be increasingly younger and less experienced.

On a personal note: Cameras in school classrooms in, Bryan out. I don’t get paid enough to deal with Big Brother watching my every move. If you want to Monday morning quarterback me, start paying me a quarterback salary.

I’m not opposed to observation or accountability. Far from it. Should parents know what curricula and materials their children are being exposed to? Should parents have a say in curricula?

Yes and yes.

Absolutely.

But those who rail against teachers are often conflating the embarrassing behavior of teachers in big city districts—or, ahem, Virginia . . . or California—with those of their local schools. In many places your child’s teachers are your neighbors. They shop where you do, pay the same inflated prices as you do, deal with many of the same frustrations as you do. They neither, as students seem to believe, blink out of existence at the closing bell—“I saw my teacher at Wal-Mart!”—nor monolithically vote the way you think they do.

Parents should absolutely be informed—nay, very well informed—on what their children are being taught and what materials are used in that teaching. Parents should have a say in these decisions, too. Parents should have an active role in not only advocating for their child but in ensuring that the school culture is one that benefits each and every child. I agree wholeheartedly as a parent and a teacher.

That said, if you want positive outcomes for your and other kids in classrooms, adding cameras in school classrooms, to those environments, is not the answer.