Here is a brief story about using GPS trackers to keep kids from ditching class (sorry about the ad):
Privacy, anyone? Kids will find a way to get around this, I guarantee it.
What's to keep kids from leaving this thing with a friend? Most likely the students are threatened with expulsion or even having to appear in court. Colorado has a state law that students must attend school for a certain amount of hours each year until they are 17...after which they can drop out.
The best part of this video is when the guy says "3 in 10 federal prisoners, 4 in 10 state prisoner and almost half those on death row...are high school dropouts." If we want to look at it that way why not: 7 in 10 federal prisoners, 6 in 10 federal prisoners and more than half those on death row...graduated from high school. Be weary of those high school graduates.
Here is a brief song about Big Brother because Mo and I are going to see Anais Mitchell Saturday night in Boulder:
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2 comments:
As a HUGE privacy advocate, I must preface my next statement by saying that I totally agree with you. This isn't going to work, kids will find a way around it, and that we shouldn't even be doing it in the first place. However, I must take you to task on your statistical data.
It's easy to reverse the statistics and laugh, but you can't just flip statistics. You're right, the remainders are high school graduates. However, the comparison needs to be made between the general population, instead of against the prison population.
For example, according to the US Census, about 85 percent of people over age 25 have completed high school. The leaves 15 percent, or 1.5 out of ten not completing high school. When you compare these rates to the prison population, you'll notice that 30 percent in the federal pen and 40 percent in the state pen and almost 50 percent of death row prisoners is statistically VERY high numbers when compared to the general populous.
It's a simple and common mistake, but I'd feel remiss if I didn't call you out on it.
Ry, I think your sarcasm rightly exposed the absurdity of the original statistics. The cleave here (yeah, I'm developing my own forms of grammar) is between absolute and relative numbers, not subtracting number from 100...if the 'flipped' statistics are absurd, then so are the original, er, unflipped statistics. Your instinct was correct.
Lets get pedantic in here: it is a rule, or dare I say axiom of logic that logic and all logical operations (including subtraction) are logical. Otherwise they would not be logical. Meaning if the outcome of a line of logic is absurd, and all logic involved is correct, than the logic can not be blamed for the absurdity. Its just garbage in, garbage out.
As for the story and the GPS tracking stuffs, eff that. There's a thousand reasons to skip class that tracking systems don't address. Like trying to maintain some sense of individuality and dignity through your high school years...but maybe the plan is to make skipping class more degrading than actually sitting through it?
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