Growing numbers of concerned parents across the country have started to push for cameras in the classroom as the debate heats up over what students are taught in public school .
Advocates claim cameras are a reliable way to improve safety, reinforce accountability, and allow parents to see and hear what their children are learning. They also say cameras could curb cheating and other bad behavior.
Critics claim surveillance systems undermine teachers, are a gross invasion of privacy, and could easily be hacked by people with nefarious intentions. Teachers unions say they would lead to “nuisance lawsuits” by conservative groups that don’t want children learning topics such as critical race theory.
Joel Withers, a father of two elementary school-aged children in Virginia, told the Washington Examiner he’s “not comfortable with complete strangers watching [my children’s] every move.”
“As a parent, I worry about who else could be watching,” he said.
Like Withers, Cathy Daley has issues with people watching what her son Ken, 12, does on a daily basis but told the Washington Examiner that she’s heard too many horror stories about what happens in school.
North Carolina parent Lyndsay Emmons told WTVD that cameras in her 4-year-old daughter’s preschool classroom might have prevented a disturbing incident that led to the suspension and eventual resignation of a teacher.
Five months after enrolling her autistic daughter in a Wake County public school, Emmons said she got a call from the principal, who told her the teacher had been suspended after allegedly placing a weighted blanket over her child’s face in an attempt to get her to go to sleep. Emmons’s daughter is nonverbal and would not have been easily able to tell her mother what had taken place.
“It was a terrible, terrible call to have to know that your child was being abused in some way,” Emmons said. “And you weren’t there, you didn’t know about it. And you can’t, you can’t fix it for her. And so, it was really, it was very rough.”
Emmons believes if cameras had been installed, the incident would have never occurred.
“Something’s wrong with the system,” she said. “We need cameras. … Anywhere that a child does not have a voice should have a camera.”
A handful of states including Texas , West Virginia , and Georgia have passed laws allowing or requiring cameras in specific classrooms.
In Louisiana , parent Chris Roe testified before state lawmakers about the need for cameras in his son’s school. Roe said his son, a special needs student, was abused at his school in New Orleans.
“Parents don’t expect that to happen when they send their kids off to school, but unfortunately, it happens more than we would like to think,” he said . “It’s traumatizing.”
Roe’s efforts paid off, and last month, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, approved a plan for video cameras to be installed inside classrooms. Any parent of a special needs child who wants a camera in the classroom can have one, though the earliest date for implementation would be the 2022-2023 school year.
In Missouri , state Sen. Cindy O’Laughlin suggested cameras as a way of keeping tabs on teachers who might slip in lessons on critical race theory. At its core, CRT is a broad set of ideas about systemic bias and racism in American history. It argues the legacy of white supremacy remains embedded in society through laws and institutions. Though tenets of it have been taught for more than 40 years, it’s the latest front in the culture war over how students should be taught U.S. history.
In 2021, 26 states introduced or passed bills that restrict how racial issues are taught.
Some parents and lawmakers like O’Laughlin who are against teaching critical race theory have floated the idea of monitoring teachers.
“Maybe we need cameras in the classroom, recording what is happening,” she said. “Teachers won’t like that, and I’m not just saying teachers who, you know, might be trying to deceive people, but they are not going to want to feel like they’re being watched.”
Teachers, and their unions, are largely opposed to being monitored so closely at work.
Glenn Sacks, who teaches social studies at James Monroe High School and represents United Teachers Los Angeles, argues cameras would do more harm than good.
“Cameras in every classroom will not only make it more difficult for teachers to create an enjoyable and relaxed atmosphere, it will also undo efforts to get our students to fully participate in the lesson,” he said .
He added that if cameras are allowed in classrooms, “well-funded conservative groups that oppose teachers’ unions and public education will scour the recordings looking for teachers’ words they can take out of context and highlight as wrongs.”
Sacks also believes that giving the green light to cameras would allow “like-minded legal advocacy groups” to file “nuisance lawsuits that harass and drain funds from unions and school districts alike.”
This article was originally published on Washington Examiner. Read the original article.
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