Edu-fascism

John Seiler:

Here’s yet another outrage from our “public” school system: GPS systems for kids who play hooky. I thought the 13th Amendment abolished slavery. Reports the Orange County Register:

ANAHEIM – Frustrated by students habitually skipping class, police and school officials in Anaheim are turning to GPS tracking to ensure they come to class.

The Anaheim Union High School District is the first in California to test Global Positioning System technology as part of a six-week pilot program that began last week, officials said.

Seventh- and eighth-graders with four unexcused absences or more this school year are assigned to carry a handheld GPS device, about the size of a cell phone.

They aren’t strapping the Stasi-devices to the kids — yet. Explains another Register article:

Miller Sylvan, regional director of the firm helping with the GPS program, talked about tracking chronically truant students:

Q. Why don’t you just attach the GPS devices to the students?

A. We don’t want to criminalize the kids or have them wear any bracelet or something around their ankle that would stigmatize them. The students are frequently entering a code and interacting with the device, so we think it’s the best way to let them carry it….

Q. Why do the students have to enter a code when it’s a GPS device that could track them at any time?

A. We want the students to be interactive with the device and take steps to let us know where they are. That helps teach them the discipline they need to be responsible. It gets them thinking about their schedule.

Get that? Discipline means following orders.

As technology improves, you can bet they’ll implant the Stasi-devices in the kids’ bodies.

Does anybody need any more explanation about why government schools really are prisons?

And the schools always blame the kids and parents, instead of blaming the school system. Consider that Anaheim High School, with 3262 students the biggest in this district,  scored an abysmal 699 (out of 1,000) on the 2009-10 API Growth measure. Could it be the kids are skipping school because it’s boring and dumb?

Like government-run schools themselves, the GPS tyranny is a way to indoctrinate young Americans into dutifully following orders in a tyrannical system.

We don’t need to “reform” this edu-fascist system, but to abolish it. Dissolve all government-run schools and repeal truancy laws. Doing so also would solve our state budget problems. How will parents pay for schooling? They could home-school. And we’ll cut their taxes so they can afford private or parochial schools.

But even letting kids roam the streets would be better than making them carry GPS spy devices.

Free the children!

Feb. 17, 2011