Last week’s column about the use of RFID badges in schools generated a lot of thoughtful reader feedback. A couple of common themes came up so I thought I’d start this week by addressing what you see as the major issues.
Last week’s column about the use of radio frequency identification badges in schools generated a lot of thoughtful reader feedback. A few common themes came up so I thought I’d start this week by addressing what you see as the major issues.
The first concern respondents raised was about the practicality of tracking students to thwart vandalism. Reader Nick Fotopoulos said: “[How] would the RFID tags help in these vandalism cases? No one is going to go do graffiti on the wall of the school wearing their RFID tag. If anything they are going to take another kid’s tag and wear it while they do it, or just neglect to wear it at all. If they are dumb enough to wear their tag while vandalizing the school then they would have been caught anyway.”
I replied: I suspect that use of tags would be more of a deterrent. As for kids not wearing tags, a well-designed system would detect someone walking past a checkpoint who didn’t have a tag.
Stolen tags would be easily dealt with – students whose tags were stolen would be required to report the theft immediately on realizing their tags were lost. If their tags were misappropriated, there would be plenty of evidence as to how their tags and the thief’s tags were being used.
Making a system like this anything near perfect would be difficult, not to mention very expensive, but the system would deliver increased accountability for students and staff, and would make misbehavior harder to get away with.
Note also that human involvement is always required. Even the automated roll call needs human supervision to work properly: Count the bodies. More tags than bodies? Alert! Less bodies? Alert! Wait, Bobby’s tag is here, Steve’s isn’t, but Steve is here? Alert!
This is not a foolproof or even bad-guy-proof system; it would exist to augment procedure rather than being a wholesale replacement.
Fotopoulos also raised the second common objection: “[Who] exactly is going to be inside a burning school messing with the RFID tracking system looking for students? Firefighters, I’m certain, would prefer walking through the school looking around rather than rely on a system that may be malfunctioning due to the fire they are fighting.”
In real life it might work this way: Alarm sounds, children leave the building. Teachers run roll call. According to the start-of-day roll call, Bobby’s at school but now he’s not with his class. The tag system says he’s in the building.
Now whether Bobby is in the building or with the wrong group, under normal conditions firefighters would enter the building to try to find him if he couldn’t be found outside.
If the tag system is working, the child’s last location will be known, a better bet for the firefighters to succeed than if the tag wasn’t in use. Without the tag system, where would they start in a large school?
Many of you also voiced concerns about “Big Brotherism” and indoctrinating children into accepting surveillance. Your concern is valid, but just consider how much significance this would have given the monitoring and surveillance that you, as an adult, have accepted with hardly a murmur.
This type of solution is not another erosion of our freedoms in the sense of a surrendering of civil liberties and/or personal autonomy and accountability. What it should be is an attempt to be organized, to be care taking, and to be responsible.
Sure, there’s opportunity for abuse and for rampant bureaucracy to misuse the system, but that is where school boards, parents and IT professionals come in: We’re the people who can make such technologies and systems work to make things better.
Tell me how at backspin@gibbs.com. Also, we’re involved in a Gearblog, so check out our postings at www.nwfusion.com/weblogs/gearblogs/.
Copyright © 2005 IDG Communications, Inc.
