The School is Watching You

All the whining about "not enough money being spent on public education" is an absolute lie.  California (allegedly) had some serious, horrible cuts to its education budget recently and yet still, one school district has so much cash that it can afford $40,000 a year to spy on its students.  The program is supposed to "catch instances of bullying or even depression before they get out of control and cause actual physical or emotional harm to the students."

I have so many problems with this, I don't know where to start.  Now, if someone were being bullied online after school by name and brought it to the attention of the teachers, they might be able to speak with the other student and solve things behind the scenes.  The internet just adds another layer to the usual teen drama/ hormones/ gossip.

But monitoring everyone?  For no reason?  And spending $40,000 to do it?  That is more than the annual income of a lot of hard-working people.  That is obscene, to spend that kind of money to peek at teen Instagram/cleavage shots.

Students are starting a "Remove Your School" facebook page to inform everyone that your public posts are tracked.  And by removing your school from your profile and/or setting your profile to "private," you are no longer being tracked by Big Brother.

I have another idea.  If millions of us "out there" set our profile to "Crescenta Valley Senior High," this program would be impossible to implement.  Another fun idea would be to use weird pseudonyms.  I think about every teen uses a pseudonym on facebook. 

Geo Listening out of Hermosa Beach, which will eavesdrop on public social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The goal of the monitoring is to catch instances of bullying or even depression before they get out of control and cause actual physical or emotional harm to the students. - See more at: http://www.educationnews.org/technology/glendale-to-monitor-all-students-public-social-media-posts/#sthash.jLq2YkWR.dpuf

Geo Listening out of Hermosa Beach, which will eavesdrop on public social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The goal of the monitoring is to catch instances of bullying or even depression before they get out of control and cause actual physical or emotional harm to the students. - See more at: http://www.educationnews.org/technology/glendale-to-monitor-all-students-public-social-media-posts/#sthash.jLq2YkWR.dpuf

Geo Listening out of Hermosa Beach, which will eavesdrop on public social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The goal of the monitoring is to catch instances of bullying or even depression before they get out of control and cause actual physical or emotional harm to the students. - See more at: http://www.educationnews.org/technology/glendale-to-monitor-all-students-public-social-media-posts/#sthash.jLq2YkWR.dpuf