"Unabashedly Pro-Union" --Mike Antonucci of the EIA.
I'm a teacher and I'm involved in my union. I highlight teacher union happenings all around the United States, including grievances, contract negotiations, elections and strikes. Contact me at drhomeslice (at) hotmail.com
Friday, June 22, 2007
Big Brother Is Watching
In Cook County, a teacher was fired due to action(s) caught on a hidden camera that was placed in the teacher's lounge. What is happening to this profession?
The story says specifically that the terminated employee was NOT a teacher. Still, cameras in the lounge, keeping tabs of everyone? Shades of Big Brother!
Though I wouldn't put it past my district to do the same, I don't think these kinds of violations of privacy (yada, yada. . . yeah, I've been told that we have no right to privacy in the workplace) are not limited to education.
We are living in a society that not only no longer questions these kinds of things, it delights in them. We are also a society that places an unquestioning loyalty to what we can do with technology. The level of voyeurism the general public expects coupled with what we now can do feeds a sick need to catch unsuspecting people in the act of doing something wrong. It also seems to me like post 9/11 American domestic policy has justified this behavior in the public's eyes.
Yeah, teachers and education are high on the hit list these days, but I fear that the problem is more universal.
2 comments:
The story says specifically that the terminated employee was NOT a teacher. Still, cameras in the lounge, keeping tabs of everyone? Shades of Big Brother!
Though I wouldn't put it past my district to do the same, I don't think these kinds of violations of privacy (yada, yada. . . yeah, I've been told that we have no right to privacy in the workplace) are not limited to education.
We are living in a society that not only no longer questions these kinds of things, it delights in them. We are also a society that places an unquestioning loyalty to what we can do with technology. The level of voyeurism the general public expects coupled with what we now can do feeds a sick need to catch unsuspecting people in the act of doing something wrong. It also seems to me like post 9/11 American domestic policy has justified this behavior in the public's eyes.
Yeah, teachers and education are high on the hit list these days, but I fear that the problem is more universal.
Big Brother is watching you.
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