Catholic Online Forum

Rose,

What is rfid?

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Valerie Garcia
vals1990@yahoo.com

"Listen, O my son, to the precepts of thy master, and incline the ear of thy heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of thy loving Father, that by the toil of obedience thou mayest return to Him ....." St. Benedict

Radio Frequency ID

It's the microchip that the girl in San Antonio is concerned about.

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Rose West
"May God help us not to spoil His work" (Bl. Mother Theresa)

Radio Frequency Identification

Big warehousing and logistics and shipping firms use this technology already.

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Dean
Most people's sense of history goes back to breakfast time - Benjamin Netanyahu

I think we may have had the same parents but I am not too sure how my dad would have handled these "chips" my dad's whole perspective on my and my brothers behavior was be where you are supposed to be when you are supposed to be there and do what you are told to do by the appropriate authority....I suspect he would have told the School Board my kids don't need no chips.

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Bob C

Dean,



And these ID Cards are a byproduct of that. If children are parented correctly, they wouldn't need them.

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Bob C

Well, that's nothing new. We have always needed attendance taking and truant officers. If children had been parented correctly back then, we wouldn't have needed manual attendance taking and truant officers either. On the other hand, if this technology were available back in the 50's, do you really believe it wouldn't have been adopted? In a time where there was more trust in government, especially local government, I bet it would have been adopted very quickly.

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Dean
Most people's sense of history goes back to breakfast time - Benjamin Netanyahu

Maybe, but I just cannot see my dad supporting something like that, he trusted local government to spend his hard earned money on things we needed, I doubt he'd see it as a need.

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Bob C

Bob, I doubt my dad would have supported it, either . . .

But as a parent of teens in the late 1970s to the late 1980s, I can assure you that I would have supported the measure, had it been available — and compared to me as a teen, my kids were great! We never had any problems with our kids beyond the usually teen indiscretions.

If by "parented correctly", Dean means rigid disciplinary practices, my dad certainly qualifies. If I got into trouble in school, the "Official" punishment paled in comparison to what would happen at home.

Yet although I was scared spitless of making dad angry, I bordered on juvenile delinquency in the mid 1950s. The only thing that kept me from having a police record before age 17 were some very generous actions by local policemen! I wound up dropping out of high school as a sophomore, primarily because I skipped so much class that it became impossible to catch up.

I didn't earn my GED until age 21, after I was married and supporting a growing family by working full time. It took another fifteen years to earn my master's and teaching certificate, attending evening classes.

Maybe it would have worked out the same way regardless but I can't help wonder what behavioral changes I would have made, had I known for certain that dad would know before I got home that I hadn't been to school that day. That was certainly the primary motivating factor that ensured I did my chores when expected — the fact that dad would know immediately if I didn't.

Who knows . . . maybe I would have graduated with my class in 1957, earned a scholarship somewhere and got a twenty-year-ealier start on my eventual teaching career!

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In Christ,

Jim B

I will consider your position if stated with firm, well-thought-out, quiet reasoning. Hateful diatribe, ad hominem attacks and shouted rhetoric don't impress.

Dean, do you think widespread distrust of big brother government is merely a product of our imagination? I tend to believe our distrust is the direct result of a government that lies, steals, cheats, ignores the constitution, and otherwise abuses its citizens; call me crazy but that's where I get my distrust and it's been building since the '60s. There is always a real underlying cause of such attitudes and it's almost always more than mass hysteria or conspiracy theories.

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BobA

What of the purpose of public education? Is it attendance or is it knowledge?

I would suggest that truancy problems are the exception. However, rather than deal with the exceptions exceptionally we see here the big government prescription.

Let us by actions reduce and redistribute the liberty from those that inherently are endowed it to those that as a result of their actions should lose some of it.

This solution is no different than many others aimed at a Utopian goal with means that punish all for the sake of a few that should be punished.

This is nothing more than a TSA like apparatus for students.

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Daniel

"Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." -- Luke 12:51

I thought you knew, it is to keep the prols under control; brainwash them; force them to drink the Kool-aid.


Who is losing liberty, and who is gaining liberty in this redistribution?


And who is being punished?

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David L (CA)
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.” - Groucho Marx

Jim



Why? Were your teens that bad? Did you worry about their school work or attendance?




My dad certainly qualified on the rigid discipline aspect. I never gave him any school related trouble, I enjoyed school and actually took more classes then required, I graduated High School at 16, with Honors. Was accepted at one of the service academies but was too young to attend and wasn't interested in waiting a year. Life was good, but I was chaffing to see the rest of the world. Tried to enlist at 17 but dad wouldn't sign the paperwork so I waited till 18. He would never have seen a need for this ID card with me, now my youngest brother....well maybe.

I would not have seen a need for my boys in school, they were always there. Perfect attendance K through 12, but by then I was a stay at home dad and I was in contact with every single one of their teachers.

For me this issue is not about religious freedom, nor even privacy, but I admit the conservative in me balks at that aspect; but rather financial what is the cost, what is the rewards?

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Bob C

The immediately obvious reward is that instead of chasing the kid all over town, whatever the modern day equivalent of a truant officer is can go straight to wherever the card is. A smart kid will have left the card home, but I'm guessing a lot of kids will be easy to track that way. My mom, as a school teacher, used to sigh and shake her head over the fact that the kids who were looking for an easy way out would do things like copy a friend's test instead of trying to copy from one of the kids who got A's.

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Rose West
"May God help us not to spoil His work" (Bl. Mother Theresa)

Rose,

As a taxpayer, why would I care that the kids who cause trouble and skip classes are rounded up and forced to attend school? All that does is lower the education for all.

I do see your mom's point, we had to buy our own books in High School, I always made sure I bought used books from the "A" students.

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Bob C

Yeah, it would be nice to just filter out the people who have no use for education, but what are we supposed to do with these children and the people they become when they grow up?

There's no good answer to that question, when unskilled labor jobs are so few and don't pay the rent.

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Rose West
"May God help us not to spoil His work" (Bl. Mother Theresa)

Bob, it is neither merely a product of imagination, nor is it always justified. I tend to believe off-the-cliff distrust is a result of both government actions and a certain mindset that is the responsibility of individuals for cultivating. I also believe there is such a thing as healthy skepticism and unhealthy paranoia.

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Dean
Most people's sense of history goes back to breakfast time - Benjamin Netanyahu

No, it would not be nice. We shouldn't find it acceptable that kids just shirk off their education and go on to be derelicts. Not only are they God's children whose dignity demands better, but an educated society is a much happier and more productive society.

Sounds a lot like "I don't care about kids who don't care about education" to me. I hope I'm misinterpreting the sentiment.

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Jeff Stevens

RFID is what's in the passports. Its range, unless you use a very concentrated high-gain antenna pointed right at it, is very short. A couple feet at absolute most.

What's in the ID's in these schools is a radio transponder, not unlike your EZPass in your car. It transmits and responds, not just respond. The range is campus-wide.

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Jeff Stevens

In this case, it is limited only to on-campus. The radio transponder needs land-based transceivers to triangulate position, and those are only on campus.

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Jeff Stevens

Rose,



Essentially, isn't that what you Homeschoolers do?





I suppose prison is where most of them wind up.



Once upon a time the answer was often the military, but not any more.

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Bob C

Jeff,



As a Catholic and a Christian, I am concerned for all of my fellow man, but somewhere along the line, reality sets in, most of these kids that are disruptive in class simply do not want to be there. Let's take an arbitrary figure say 5%, what about the other 95% of the kids who put in an honest days labor in the classroom, don't they too deserve our consideration?

I was spoiled, I never set foot in a public school during the school year. I did on occasion take some summer school classes that were not offered at my Catholic High School...drivers ed was one, Advanced Geometry was another.

Frankly I tried to keep my sons out of Public School, but I simply could not afford the tuition for the Catholic High Schools, they both attended the local Public School and survived, but they had to put up with all the disruption of kids that did not want to be there.

What's the solution? Beats me, I wish I knew. Some locations have specialty schools where those trouble makers are definitely unwelcome by their peers, but that is not universal.

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Bob C

It appears you completely missed my point, which is that we do need to care about those people.

If our society was more balanced, there would be a career path for those people who just aren't suited for a conventional education. We'd make sure they could do the basic functions, and then give them a chance to learn a trade, farming, or whatever was more suited to their personality. We wouldn't be trying to shove every child into a college-prep program. We'd have appropriate paths suited to everyone's skills, and we would recognize the dignity of every job.

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Rose West
"May God help us not to spoil His work" (Bl. Mother Theresa)

The best solution would be to sort out how and where to educate the children who don't think they want it, at least not in a classroom. Unfortunately, our system has chosen to herd them all like farm animals in buildings that are called schools. These cards appear to be just another tool in that process, sort of like tagging wildlife.

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Rose West
"May God help us not to spoil His work" (Bl. Mother Theresa)

So they could catch up to the kids who sneak behind the gymnasium to get a smoke but not the kids who go fishing?

I'm not sure there's much value to that.

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Rose West
"May God help us not to spoil His work" (Bl. Mother Theresa)

Kids who go fishing would show up as not on campus.

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Jeff Stevens

Gotcha.

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Rose West
"May God help us not to spoil His work" (Bl. Mother Theresa)

Which could result in a call to parents as soon as the absence was detected.

I can't speak for others but knowing that dad would immediately know when I wasn't in school would definitely have been a successful deterrent to skipping.

Waay back when I was in school, initial parental notification of absenteeism was most likely to be by letter. Since I usually picked up the mail on the way home (but often not home from school), such notification were often 'lost'. Only when several such notifications failed to generate a parental response would a phone call be made.

In the 1950s, cell phones didn't exist so contacting a parent during the day was an "iffy" proposition. Though my mom was a homemaker, as such she frequently made trips to the grocery store and other places. If the call corresponded with a time when she was delivering eggs to her customers or a trip to the doctor or grocery shopping, or if the line was busy (most people those days had a party line) of any of several other possible combinations, it could easily take several attempts to communicate. We — and most other families of that era — didn't have an answering machine.

As a parent AND a retired teacher, I support the school's taking advantage of available technology to ensure the welfare of my children/students.

And to respond to the charge that public schools are a 'one size fits all' institution, I simply reply that it is also an institution that has to fight for every dollar it receives.

I'm probably a bit more sensitive to that charge because I recall all the evenings I was grading papers, calling parents and doing what I could to make the best of a difficult situation. If you believe that public school teachers don't care about students, you've either had an atypical experience in which teachers are indifferent or you've been misinformed.

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In Christ,

Jim B

I will consider your position if stated with firm, well-thought-out, quiet reasoning. Hateful diatribe, ad hominem attacks and shouted rhetoric don't impress.

Rose,



My # 2 son is a Kinesthetic learner so I totally agree with you, we tried to carve his schedule toward those classes where he would have the most opportunities. He is smart as can be, but book learning is a struggle for him.

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Bob C

Jim,



I think it is a mixed bag, most of the teachers I interacted with seemed to be working very hard at being good teachers, but not all.

One teacher my son had was such a jerk, I wanted my son removed from his class and was told there were no vacancies, after I explained in no uncertain terms to the school principal that her choice was to accommodate me or my next stop was the governors office in Tallahassee and then she would accommodate me or her replacement would. A vacancy was found. The old squeaky wheel works again.

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Bob C

Some of you are assuming that a kid who shirks high school is shirking education and will end up a derelict or criminal or somehow else a drain on society. One of my more successful brother's dropped out of high school. I was encouraged to drop out by two teachers. I cared very much about learning but cut school as often as possible and only attended when the truancy office was involved and my father was ill and I didn't want to further stress him. I graduated from high school but it was useless to my future, even having that diploma meant nothing as I know of no employers who actually checked though I suppose some did. Maybe I have a learning disability with math but with an inability to do higher math and therefore an inability to attend college until community colelge, school was meaningless. I was better read than some of my teachers which is pathetic but true and I encountered many who were indifferent and a few who were below par in basic literacy skills.

I was lucky to end up in an alternative school that challenged me intellectually, it's the only reason I graduated though I barely made it. Jim is an example of someone who shirked school but went on to be successful, for him it took additional education but for many, especially in the old economy, it did not. I don't know if you can call me a success but I was a manager for 22 years and I was never a delinquent, a lawbreaker or anything less than a hard worker. I never graduated from community college though had 60 units because I can't do math. Because of life events and financial reasons, I could never go to a four year school but even if I could, there was the math issue.

I would have better job prospects if I had a degree but many employers only began to require degrees (and some for relatively simple jobs) because high schools don't produce literate graduates, again making it useless for many.

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Valerie Garcia
vals1990@yahoo.com

"Listen, O my son, to the precepts of thy master, and incline the ear of thy heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of thy loving Father, that by the toil of obedience thou mayest return to Him ....." St. Benedict

Again, the conventional classroom was not your bag, or Jim's, or my daughter's, or Bob's son's, and very likely neither is it practical for many or even most kids who drop out and become a drain on society.

The problem is that in most places, the conventional classroom is all that's offered, so those whose skills and personality are not suited to the situation are in real danger. What would you have become, if you had not found a better school? Jim, living in a time when people didn't view schools the way they do now, had other options. I home educated my daughter. What would these people have become without those other options?

It used to be that education was the easiest way to succeed but not the only way. A person who worked hard could find alternate paths or could be self taught. Not so much any more.

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Rose West
"May God help us not to spoil His work" (Bl. Mother Theresa)

Back closer to the topic of the thread:

If people had to provide microchip-embedded IDs at schools, would today have gone differently in Connecticut?

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Rose West
"May God help us not to spoil His work" (Bl. Mother Theresa)

Possibly, only God knows.

I was actually thinking about this earlier in the discussion, how these chips might affect the efforts of team shooters like at Columbine, it would make it easier to track students down, and more difficult for the students to hide.

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Bob C

Rose,



There is a small dry dock company here in Tampa who is so desperate for trained workers. The owner has partnered with one of the Local High Schools to set up an apprenticeship program...how novel. Given the size of the port there is work for many years to come.

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Bob C

If the guy has a card reader and access to the school's database, that's possible.

I was just thinking that if cards were required at the door, this guy wouldn't have gotten into the building without being stopped. Perhaps there would have been less violence involving the actual children.

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Rose West
"May God help us not to spoil His work" (Bl. Mother Theresa)

But, that begs the question of how a man in combat gear walked into an elementary school, undetected until he was in a classroom shooting five year old children. I heard that the school had recently upped their security but I don't know if that is true or not. Fencing schools in (I don't know if this was or not) might help but you still have to leave a gate open for people to drive out of. Lock every hallway...still have to let kids in and out all day. Lock every classroom, would probably help and not that crazy an idea. But, a security guard with a microchip reader at the front of the school doesn't sound like something that would have prevented these murders.

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Valerie Garcia
vals1990@yahoo.com

"Listen, O my son, to the precepts of thy master, and incline the ear of thy heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of thy loving Father, that by the toil of obedience thou mayest return to Him ....." St. Benedict

Val,



It has been reported here that he was the son of one of the teachers. He was seen on CCTV and then buzzed through the door.

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James Daly

"It is the Lord." (Jn 21:7)

You forgot, childcare services, free meals, and sex training to name a few...



The children being monitored and treated like cattle LOSE because of the few with poor attendance who may have a problem or are a problem...



Directly, the children who do show up -indirectly, the tax payers who must fund the absurdity.

Simply Put -THIS solution is being put in place BECAUSE an attendance problem is already evident. ALL that will be accomplished is a more (MAYBE) accurate count. THIS will fix nothing and will only ADD more bureaucracy to an already burdened epic failure of bureaucracy.

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Daniel

"Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." -- Luke 12:51

Moderator's Note.

I moved several posts from this thread to the Discussion on Gun Control/ School Shooting, somehow they were originally posted in this thread.

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Bob C