School ‘spied on pupils at home through webcams’ ….. stand by for legal action …
on 02/18/2010 at 02:14 PM
The legal ramifications from this are really going to hurt. Can you say child porn, invasion of privacy.voyeurism?
Posted by harleycowboy58
02/18/2010 at 03:17 PM
Wow, the school really hung itself out to dry here, the punitive damages are going to be massive. Got popcorn Peiper? We’re gonna need a lot of it for this show.
Sounds like another mass firing to me. Might as well just turn over the entire budget to the parents right now and start selling the buildings ... because the lawsuits will bankrupt them.
So did the Improper Behavior result in Hairy Palms and partial Blindness? The article didn’t say.
Catman - the operative word in your name is Old - we have 5 computers in the house and all but one stay on mostly 24/7 - right now I think only one has cam properties. The kids (young adults that they are) stay up half the night and share all kinds of shots of themselves. It is a whole ‘nother world out there - and my kids are educated and decent - can’t imagine what the lesser raised heathens do.
I’d love to live in that district - My lawsuit would have already been filed. This is what lawyers should be about - abuse of people - by government agents - on the taxpayer’s dime.
Fire, hell no - shot at sunrise for the arrogant idiot who thought this one up.
Sorry to break the cheer a bit, but this can ONLY be the tip of the iceberg. Just TRUST me on that one. I have enough horror stories from the Santa Clara Unified School Districts (a good 86% of the staff whom I would feel absolutely no sadness over if an out-of-the-way nuclear bomber were to accidentally vaporize) to last me a few lifetimes, and I have ABSOLUTELY no reason to believe that anything less went on here.
Trust me on this when I say that most school districts- at least at the higher levels- could EASILY win the title of “Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy” many times over within the course of a couple fairly average months. The upper levels of power have been turned into a more perverted, corrupt, sadistic, and slightly taller version of the High School cliques they are supposed to police, a teacher can get away with rampant corruption (*accidentally* misplacing 20 papers from the same student and marking them as “Tardy"), open crassness (as in out and outright YELLING at a student who is doing nothing more than politely asking questions or correcting them), and even threatening to start a PHYSICAL FIGHT in a PACKED, IN-SESSION CLASSROOM, and said teacher can STILL get off scot free with no ill repercussions whatsoever because of Tenure, the “Good Boy’s Club” connections, and the fact that the administration looks upon people filing a complaint of any kind with all the respect and duty that your average Gulag administrator looks at a troublesome prisoner who just doesn’t understand *his place.* That, and tenure has often been used as a crutch for corrupt, dysfunctional, abusive, aggressive, and generally bad egg staff members to keep their job against any and all misbehavior that doesn’t splash on the frontpage of the Mercury News. Hell, that was pretty much the ONLY thing I could agree with Obama’s recently departed Edu. Czar about: getting rid of goddamn tenure. And believe me when I say that the scandal that caused her departure was perhaps the ONLY time I was remotely sad about a Dem getting caught with their fingers in dirty pies.
I am sorry, but while I have never really subscribed to the gospel of Home Schooling (say what you will about Leftist influences in Academia- it isn’t anything I haven’t loudly cursed about- but there are few substitutes for exposure to other ideas and qualified teachers, albeit there is plenty of trash involved), but the current Public Education system needs to go YESTERYEAR.
And the sad thing is that I damn well KNOW it isn’t limited to the SCUSD or to California. Take a look at Ward Churchill’s blatant lies and falsehoods on his “academic credentials.” Sure, the Left loves whining about how it was just a convenient pretext to kick him out for the “Birds coming home to roost” tripe (and I cannot say I entirely disagree with that assessment) but leaving aside the question of whether a College should have a right to define who can and cannot teach there (which I support) the fact remains- and next to NOBODY on the Left has denied this- is that the skeletons in his closet were actually REAL. And THAT, in my opinion, is reason enough to kick him out the door and blacklist him. Hell, I would advocate the same thing for a CONSERVATIVE who did similar things. And the damn kicker about this? After definitive proof about his misconduct emerged, he actually WON a wrongful dismissal suit against his prior employers. Let me state that again: he WON a WRONGFUL-TERMINATION LAWSUIT in spite of there being pretty much absolute proof that he WAS actually GUILTY!
Ponder that thought, because THAT is how broken American schools are, and THAT is ho much work there remains to be done. I shudder to think about what they are like elsewhere (Pieper, any complaints?).
Posted by Turtler
02/20/2010 at 06:35 AM
Turtler,
Complaints? From me? Why? No. I haven’t any complaints. Surprised? You bet.I have no experience as an adult with schools in the USA. And never having been a parent, well, you can see how much I know. Except what I have read of course and that is not a whole lot. What surprises me here is, what a difference I’m getting between American and Brit schools from what you are writing about.
Over here the teachers get raped by 12 year olds, get spit on and abused and heaven help the teacher who raises a hand against some little monster. In my day, when a kid misbehaved he, to be read as usually yours truly, got his hand slapped (open palm) with a ruler. OUCH. That stung. Today no teacher would do that and if done would be sued and out on their ear.
But it pretty much kept me in line. Not that I would have ever dared to be abusive. But I tended to be a class clown. Convenient way to hide insecurities I now realize.As for the posted story, I don’t have any doubts whatever that the school authorities did exactly that.
Things and technology sure different these days, aren’t they? Have you ever wondered (and you probably have) why ppl go to odd lengths to screw up, when things are done so much easier if done straight forward and honestly. The energy it must take to fiddle surely must be more difficult and time consuming and costly.
Whoops ... my mind wondered as I started to think about the fiddling and lying going on here over MPs expenses.
CheersFirstly, before starting in, I would like to address a typho here.
a good 86% of the staff whom I would feel absolutely no sadness over if an out-of-the-way nuclear bomber were to accidentally vaporize
I apologize for mentioning this, but I meant to say
a good 86% of the HIGH staff whom I would feel absolutely no sadness over if an out-of-the-way nuclear bomber were to accidentally vaporize
I did not notice the difference until after I had posted, and I would like to clarify. Most of the staff members of schools I have met- including the dreaded SCUSD- are primarily decent, hardworking grunts who do the best they can for their students without letting them walk over them. Yes, even the Liberal ones (and there are a LOT of Liberal ones).
The ISSUE- as I mentioned before- is that such an ethos sadly does not transcend up the pecking order. As I mentioned before, most of the District office bigshots I would feel no remorse for if they were to fall victim to a misguided Chinese bomber, and that description includes pretty much everyone from the Vice Principals upward. Unfortunately it is THEY who truly call the shots, resulting in aforementioned corrupt slime.
I apologize for the clarification.
Over here the teachers get raped by 12 year olds, get spit on and abused and heaven help the teacher who raises a hand against some little monster.
I’ve heard similar things, and doubtless there are a few cases here as well. However, such cases are VERY much in the minority. For instance, the most recent case I dealt with was where a similar (albeit far, FAR, FAR more mild) scenario played out here, just to give you a flavor for the discrepancies that seem to exist across the pond. It dealt with one of the AP Econ/Civics teachers here, one of the people who has tenure that actually DESERVES it. He has a few decades of teaching under his belt, is a veteran (apparently he worked in intel during the latter days of the Cold War), has more humorous anecdotes than you can throw a stick at, and is readily one of the sharpest people I know in regards to politics. And yes, he is a loony Lefty. And while in most cases that would seem like an oxymoron, in his case it isn’t, because he has more than a few skewers for both sides and teaches the class far more impartially and generally better than I ever could.
What happened was basically that a large number of his AP students in 2nd period complained about the fact that he was overpacking them with work. Which, to be entirely fair, was true, but with good reason: he was trying to get them ready for Collage and Collage-level workloads. This protest attracted the attention of some of the parents, and it ended with him dumping most of his homework assignments and redesigning the curriculum.
Sounds like something that would happen over there? Well, it would at first. But what truly reveals the nature of this is how it played out.
1. This school has recently suffered a rather nasty scandal (it is Wilcox High, if you need reference; check the San Jose Mercury News for details), with the result that the Press (in what must be a shocking case of them actually doing something USEFUL for a change) has been focusing some attention on the school, with predictable results (heightened publicity/exposure, everyone outside becomes more attentive and everyone inside becomes more malleable).
2. The teacher involved was more of a colorful outsider on the school staff, which meant that whatever protection he received from the “Old Boys Network” was far lessened from what it normally would have been.
3. (and this is VERY important) The teacher, unlike most of his superiors and a few of his colleagues, actually has INTEGRITY, and the fallout from this left him rather stunned. As a result, I believe he suffered a minor nervous breakdown, took it upon HIMSELF to reorganize his curriculum, and then went off to Australia a day before break to collect himself. I can think of very, VERY few who would go to those lengths to do so, and indeed his changes actually outstripped anything the aforementioned protesters had asked for (indeed, I have very good information to believe they themselves are in a state of mild shock over it).THAT is what it took (particularly #3) to get something like that to occur over here. I would imagine over there it is a vastly different story. Perhaps the situation you describe would happen more frequently in, say, an inner city area (think Detroit) rather than in a White Bread area like my own (but from what I have heard of New York’s, LA’s, and Sacramento’s districts, I have my doubts about that).
In any event, we need to clean up on both sides of the Atlantic. Same story, eh?
Hoe about a trade: we switch the teachers and the students, and put the poor, tyrannized teachers in with a public that actually knows how to behave, and put the corrupt bureaucrats in with the bastards. Of course, collateral damage would have to be factored in before such a trade could be arranged and with situational judgements made accordingly, but I think it just might work. What say you?
Posted by Turtler
02/20/2010 at 07:31 AM
Almost forgot this:
Have you ever wondered (and you probably have) why ppl go to odd lengths to screw up, when things are done so much easier if done straight forward and honestly. The energy it must take to fiddle surely must be more difficult and time consuming and costly.
Well, if this district is ANYTHING like the lovely SCUSD, I would simply say it comes down to power. The people who OK’ed this probably come from an inbred, corrupt, and incestuous sewer that resides at the top of the district’s pecking order. They have been isolated from the negative consequences of their prior actions, have been operating on a “you scratch my back I scratch yours” buddy/buddy system rather than one based on merit, and have generally had the run of the town because they’ve been able to get away with nearly anything they tried to.
And as a result, they went mad with power. It’s like the Wikipedia bigshots (and yes, for the purposes of disclosure, they have indeed banned me for life) who have been utterly butchering quite a bit of history. Half of them wouldn’t even KNOW the history they are dismembering if it came up and shot them in the face. But, you see, they are in the “In-Crowd”, capable of changing the past in a few sentences’ work with the push of the ‘EDIT’ button. And pretty much ALL of them have an axe to grind. That in and of itself is not atypical of Wiki users, but you must realize that unlike said typical Wiki users, THEY are the Aristocracy, the appointed ones, the petty little self-created Wiki Gods with immunity from virtually any outside scrutiny. If history doesn’t go the way they want it to, they simply CHANGE it. After all, who’s going to object? The petty little mooks who go on there and try to make an objective work? BAH! A simple ban will get rid of them. After all, with few layers above them to check their power, the sky is the limit.
You see what kind of mindset that is, and how utterly destructive it is? I would be tempted to say that it is the same thing that motives the Mullahs, Osama, Kim Jong-Il, Putin, etc, but that would be a gross insult to said Rogues’ gallery. Because they are motivated by the potential of a future of their making, be it the resurrected Russian Czardom restored to its “rightful” conquests, or the global theocracy of Dar Al Islam, or a “Chinese Asia”, or any number of things. What we are dealing with in this case is something infinitely more pathetic: a bunch of sealed idiots cut off from the rest of the world who think their pecking order and petty little games are the most important things in existence.
It’s the same thing that brought down the US Auto industry, it’s the same that has ruined the Unions, it’s the same thing that destroyed the the Manchu Empire, and it is now eating away at the soul of the West in a way none of the overt threats really have: a little nibble here, a little nibble there, nothing you would think is devastating until the entire support structure collapses. Probably not unlike your example as well.
As for the overall, grand, one-size-fits-all answer to that quest, I do not know, but I suspect it shares much with the above diagnosis.
Posted by Turtler
02/20/2010 at 07:47 AM
02/18/2010 at 06:11 PM
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