Teachers give toilet CCTV top marks As schools increasingly opt to install cameras in their pupils’ toilets, a survey this week shows the message from some teachers is “do as we say, not as we do”. This week, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) released the results of a preliminary survey of CCTV usage in schools. 85 per cent of teachers say that …
"I got you on the cctv. You know what you were doing. Now give me your lunch money all this week or it's going to the head, your parents and anyone else I can think of."
Of course it doesn't matter that the bully is making it up or that he has no idea what his victim was doing, fear is all that matters. CCTV is a big bullying tool and I don't doubt that school bullies are already making the most of it.
"If they want to be treated like adults, act like them too."
Thanks Andy, you made me chuckle on an otherwise stressful day.
They are not adults, and the issue is not to treat them like adults. The issue is to treat them like humans. Which they are, whether they're unruly due to bad parenting skills, or perfectly well behaved little automotons, or some more healthy option somewhere in between.
If teachers want CCTV in schools to protect the school and its pupils and staff, then the classroom is just as important a place for them to be protected. And of course, if the teachers are being as well-behaved and 'adult' as you suggest, then they should have nothing to worry about, right?
Don't get me wrong, I hate the whole idea - we're already headed for 1984 in this country waaaaay too fast for my liking, but if teachers really want CCTV in schools, they can't expect to be immune to it themselves.
I think we'd have a much more fair and truly 'civilised' society if anyone who wanted to set up some form of surveillance or monitoring on the general public had to agree to be monitored by the same system and to the exact same extent themselves. Then there'd be a real reason to make sure these things only came into place when they really needed to, and for the right reasons.
of cathcing them breaking school rules when if you try to enforce them you end up in the high court because expulsion is discriminating and interfereing with their rights.
We're using technology instead of asking the question, why do youg people no longer respect the authority of the teachers, or anyone else?
Usually I find something funny in these columns, but it is difficult in this case.
I am currently engaged in a condition survey of schools in a London Borough. All the schools have CCTV and they need it, however none have cameras in the toilets and there is good reason. Firstly there is the sensitivity to privacy secondly is the security of the recordings which I find to be below a reasonable standard. I can foresee the possibility of something recorded on the school CCTV appearing on U tube or worse. If that should happen shit and fan would come close together.
In any case CCTV is the least of the worries as far as toilet privacy is concerned. The windows in older building are frequently standard sill height and whilst the frosted glass gives the superficial appearance of privacy from the inside, as you will all remember, from the outside this is not the case and you can see everything. Woe betide any teacher using the cubicle next to the window!
As to whether schools should find the money for CCTV, the fact is they do. It may well be an insurance issue. One of the schools surveyed was completed in 1957 and still has the completely original toilets in full use. And here comes the joke "why should anyone want to record the fact of kids using 50 year old toilets?"
I saw this first-hand attending a small 4-room school, with two toilets, an office and a kitchen. The principal was the 7/8th grade teacher. The hall was the cafeteria; everybody (including the teachers) took their chairs out at lunchtime to the long table built against the window side of the hall and got their lunch from the kitchen window at the end of the hall.
Then they added an extension, consisting of a teacher's lounge and toilets. The teachers took turns supervising lunch while the rest ate in the teacher's lounge. The teachers took turns supervising the schoolyard during recess.
Immediately harassment and bullying became epidemic, there was smoking, drugs and sex in the student bathrooms. And the teacher "on duty" made it very clear that they resented not being with their buddies in the lounge. The last two years I spent in that small-town school were pure hell.
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