catapult magazine

In the wake of Columbine, schools are putting more and more cameras in classrooms so the principal can watch what’s going on. Teachers think it will help with discipline problems, too. One teacher I saw on the news said that now all she does when a kid is acting up is point to the cameras threateningly and they usually shape up.

I knew cameras were good for something!

On one hand, I’m glad they’re working. On the other hand, the use of cameras in schools points to larger problems. Those cameras are akin to fat cops with guns. Who’s actually got the authority? The fat cop you know you could beat running around the block or the gun that you know you can’t? Same with cameras – the teachers themselves seem to have accepted that they, as disciplinarians, are ineffectual. So they point to the cameras.

So why is it that adults can’t seem to control children these days? It’s a real crisis in parenting – be it from daycare and/or a parent’s moral relativism and/or laziness.

Just a quick thought – criminals still rob (and shoot in) stores with cameras, such as convenience stores and the like. And if a student is willing to walk into a school and start shooting, then kill themself, I guess I don’t know why a camera would stop them. Maybe the cameras are aimed (no pun intended) at curbing the teasing, etc. that people feel has caused the shootings.

I just have a feeling that cameras in schools are not the answer, nor will they be an effective band-aid for very long.

I’m wondering how long it will be before Fox releases “School: The Secret Lives of Students and Teachers” as the next reality series.

Think of the boost these cameras will give to the kids’ self esteem. In this crazy mixed up world we live in today, it must make school-children feel very special to be worthy of being in front of so many cameras aimed right at them. This is a revolutionary event. Now kids will actually be learning how to use the camera to their own benefit at a young age, something it took people like Oprah years to learn. Think of the children. In our schools today, we’re training the television stars of the future.

grant, i think you may have found a calling in life, and maybe i have to if the academic thing doesn’t work out, spot the next models and pop stars through school cameras, woohoo! ;)
alongside fox’s new reality series on their secret lives, they could spin off another version of american idol.

i am suprised that kids are actually intimidated by cameras in the classrooms; i remember when they put cameras in the buses at my school, ‘dear’ tc. the school had alot of problems on the buses; kids fighting, teasing each other, paper airplane and spitwad contests, and so on. so the administration decided to put cameras in the buses; stopped some of the problems for awhile, because there was a huge crackdown. but the admin. was not vigilant and after awhile kids figured out that chances were the cameras where not on or that the dean ‘jack’ was not watching them- because nothing happened when kids would flick the camera off or wave hi to ‘jack’. perhaps the classroom cameras will go the way of the dinosaur, like those on tc’s buses. :D

Exactly, Grant! Reality television seems to be feeding off a generation of attention-seekers and it can’t be too long until some young megalomaniac realizes the notoriety to be had by committing a heinous crime on camera … which our media will obligingly replay over and over again.

That’s Chicago! Or so says the movie “Chicago”. The other possibility is that people will get so used to cameras that they won’t go crazy for that kind of attention anymore. If everyone can be on camera, it’s no longer special.

ever seen the movie 15 minutes? (i think that is its name, a criminal kills a cop and has cameras there, can’t remember if it was live or on tape, a media huckster broadcasts it) or what about the teenages in pittsburg (?) that are shocking the homeless with tazors and taping it. the vision has come true.
what do think then about cameras on the streets watching traffic and streets in ‘high’ crime areas? they are starting to do that in chicago, but it doesn’t seem to be raising furor it did in tampa a couple of years ago.

IF there are going to be cameras on the streets, the children might as well get used to them already in Kindergarten—although we should probably assume children already have become accustomed to babycams and baby-sitter cams at home, so maybe cameras in schools is not all that new to them.