I feel that training kids to think of an extreme level of surveillance as a normal and unremarkable thing to be asked to comply with is going to have terrible consequences because it means a generation of adults with the mindset that it is no big deal.
I’m not saying I agree with any of these policies. I’m just saying that they aren’t some kind of huge emergency that is a massive departure from existing school policies, nor that they imply some sort of corruption. And my main issue is that the video is made as essentially a one-sided hate-jerk, rather than as a thoughtful analysis of why things are happening and what to do about it. It seems made to appeal to (1) teens that don’t like the policy, and want to learn more reasons about why their anger is justified and (2) conspiracy nuts who want to believe that the lizard people are training us to be slaves.
This, then, fails to adequately inform any viewer of the actual cause of the problem, which may then result in actual solutions - realizing that these policies are made by not-very-smart, handwringing school board members, and that the solition is to take an active role in your school board if you care about things like this.
That’s fair, and I don’t know about backpacks, but commercial conspiracies to get anti-privacy products into schools absolutely do exist. I know someone who worked for years with technology training programs for school employees and much of the funding was coming from Google, with the main effect of pushing chromebooks and their cloud ecosystem. Lots of free stuff, innocuous seeming propaganda and networking, and hiring people to do this who the target audience will respect and relate to. Money buys access and influence, don’t imagine that lobbying is only a thing in the context of high level government officials. The idea of competing with this as someone with an axe to grind, no bribes to offer, and large cultural differences with the decision makers… maybe it could move the needle slightly, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
I feel that training kids to think of an extreme level of surveillance as a normal and unremarkable thing to be asked to comply with is going to have terrible consequences because it means a generation of adults with the mindset that it is no big deal.
I’m not saying I agree with any of these policies. I’m just saying that they aren’t some kind of huge emergency that is a massive departure from existing school policies, nor that they imply some sort of corruption. And my main issue is that the video is made as essentially a one-sided hate-jerk, rather than as a thoughtful analysis of why things are happening and what to do about it. It seems made to appeal to (1) teens that don’t like the policy, and want to learn more reasons about why their anger is justified and (2) conspiracy nuts who want to believe that the lizard people are training us to be slaves.
This, then, fails to adequately inform any viewer of the actual cause of the problem, which may then result in actual solutions - realizing that these policies are made by not-very-smart, handwringing school board members, and that the solition is to take an active role in your school board if you care about things like this.
That’s fair, and I don’t know about backpacks, but commercial conspiracies to get anti-privacy products into schools absolutely do exist. I know someone who worked for years with technology training programs for school employees and much of the funding was coming from Google, with the main effect of pushing chromebooks and their cloud ecosystem. Lots of free stuff, innocuous seeming propaganda and networking, and hiring people to do this who the target audience will respect and relate to. Money buys access and influence, don’t imagine that lobbying is only a thing in the context of high level government officials. The idea of competing with this as someone with an axe to grind, no bribes to offer, and large cultural differences with the decision makers… maybe it could move the needle slightly, but I wouldn’t bet on it.