Careless writing, over generalized and innaccurate. From my personal experience with my own children and my past students this is true for some but certainly not all OUSD students.

The results were: 57 percent opposed and 43 percent in favor, with a 95% confidence interval and margin of error of plus or minus 10.12 percent (as calculated here: http://faculty.vassar.edu/lowry/polls/calcs.html#ca4).

And, yes, as Harlemmoon puts it, “anybody with a poll and an agenda can spin the result as he wishes,” but fortunately I was raised better than that.

If schools truly were being patrolled by these organic, nurturing and ever-present teacher/body guards, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

The responses to cameras are mixed. Sure. No surprise there. But OUSD gets a thumbs up for willing to try something, anything – rather than just waiting for this army of teachers to magically appear and dutifully patrol the school rooms/halls (and not ask for more money because it isn’t part of their job description).

The school’s fault. And changable.

Gordon Danning: I suppose you actually that believe what the State Of California piously pronounces is real? All the time, for everybody?? This reminds me of our previous debate over Children leaving the school grounds during class and participating in street demonstrations without their parents. I said that should not happen, my critics took the position that the Chillun have all these “rights” and should go out and try them out. I seem to remember some dumb kid getting maced ot tasered by the cops, etc….

Children have increased responsibility and liability and unfortunately someone lowered the age of majority to 18 from 21 so adolescents can now get themselves in terminal trouble. Many people require 21 or more years to grow up, especially with a 2 digit IQ.

So no, teens don’t get taken seriously in decisions with long term or permanent consequences. Not if you like your kid and want them to survive and prosper.

You can pretend to let them make critical decisions. I don’t play. I’d talk about their feelings and perceptions, agree and disagree and encourage to get other opinions. But teens don’t call the shots.

I’d be likely to limit or restrict their being out 1am (as a rule). Same reasons.

Results 2, 1, 3. The students wanted to talk to and be seen by adults. Students wanted to feel safe but didn’t feel like the security cameras would do anything. Since it is the students and student behavior we are monitoring and attempting to influence it would seem that they would know what and how student behavior would be affected by our decisions.

What students seem to want is a school environment that is safe – physically and emotionally. If I told you I was going to keep a camera on you all day at work how would you feel, safer? My guess is no, you would not feel safer, but harassed.

I happen to “know” that many students will feel more comfortable with cameras because they’ve said as much to me. No polling, no spin. Just straight responses.

I find that odd, because the State of California expects high school students to be able to, among other things, “evaluate and take and defend positions on the scope and limits of rights and obligations as democratic citizens, the relationships among them, and how they are secured,” “distinguish valid arguments from fallacious arguments in historical interpretations,” “evaluate major debates among historians concerning alternative interpretations of the past, including an analysis of authors’ use of evidence and the distinctions between sound generalizations and misleading oversimplifications,” “construct and test hypotheses; collect, evaluate, and employ information from multiple primary and secondary sources; and apply it in oral and written presentations,” and “conduct cost/benefit analyses and apply basic economic indicators to analyze the aggregate economic behavior of the U.S. economy.”

Yet, they are “absolutely not qualified” to have an opinion on security cameras in schools? Again, that seems very, very odd.

What is even odder is that, when Harlemmoon cited student opinion to SUPPORT the use of cameras, no one jumped in to say that students are not qualified to give an opinion. What a strange world we live in.

I just looked up “self-parody” in the dictionary, and there’s a picture of Nextset. Go figure!