Ubiquitous video: for good or evil?

 

He knows when you are sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!
Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Big Brother is Watching You
George Orwell

My parents, like many, obtained somewhat better behavior from my siblings and me by invoking the old threat that Santa was watching us - at least during the month before Christmas. "Bad" children got coal, not candy, in their stockings. The rest of the year its seemed either Jesus or God monitored our behavior, the type of which would send us either to heaven or hell at some later date.. Perhaps this is why I've never been a huge fan of universal surveillance. Being naughty was a good deal more fun than behaving oneself.

I shared this anti-monitoring distaste as I discussed Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four with the high school juniors I taught. Above my classroom's intercom box (where we knew Principal Crabtree sometimes listened in without announcing himself) hung a student made poster that read "Big Brother is Listening to You."  

More recently science fiction books like Egger's The Circle, Suarez's Freedom, and Kavenna's Zed have explored the implications of corporate and governmental surveillance cameras, painting a disturbing environment in which human freedom is greatly curtailed by overreach. Happily, my biases were confirmed by reading them.

And we have certainly seen video monitoring increase in stores, intersections, parking ramps, hotel hallways, and who know where else. I did NOT like the threat of either Santa or local law enforcement watching me going through intersections with only a "California" stop. Homeowners are installing doorbell cameras to go along with baby (and spouse?) monitors within the home itself. While I don't really think I've ever done too much that I would mind being recorded, I still didn't like the idea of it.

But my views shifted last week.

I, along with millions of other horrified viewers, watched the gruesome death of George Floyd  - because someone in the gathered crowd took a video of the incident. No conflicting eyewitness accounts. No deep fake digital manipulations. Just flat out proof by means of a movie of a white police officer killing a black man who was already restrained and pleading for his life. The abstraction of racial bias and police brutality was no longer just a concept, but a frightening reality for anyone to actually see.

Would the officers involved have behaved differently had they known they were being recorded? I don't know.

I'd like to think that most humans behave decently because they are at heart decent people, not because they may be punished. My friends and family respect others, empathize, practice kindness, act charitably, and preserve the environment, and I doubt worry a whole lot about heaven or hell. But for those who do break the law, destroy the environment, mistreat their children, or abuse minorities, would the knowledge that their every move is recorded alter their behavior? Did red light running decrease with intersection videos? Did shoplifting decrease with in-store cameras?

While I am deeply saddened that Mr. Floyd was killed, I am grateful it was captured on a video that may be the spark needed to light fires of reform. Would more such sparks be made were cameras ubiquitous?

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BFTP: The book as object

Show me your bookcase, the ideas that you've collected one by one over the years, the changes you've made in the way you see the world. Not your browser history, but the books you were willing to buy and hold and read and store and share. Seth Godin

My books are read. They’re loved. And they’re carefully preserved so that they can be read and loved again, by myself or by friends or future children -- or used bookstore shoppers. Claire Fallon

Book lovers everywhere have resisted digital books because they still don’t compare to the experience of reading a good old fashioned paper book. Smell of Books

One of the first things I do when visiting someone's house is to peruse the bookshelves. As Godin above suggests, the books people save tend to tell you a great deal about their values. For the visitor, the physical book becomes a gateway to understanding a bit about another person. I tend to stay away from political discussions if I find Ayn Rand on the shelves.

When my grandson Miles asked for a Kindle for his 10th birthday, I was happy but also a little bit surprised. Both Miles and his brother are big readers and have some pretty extensive collections of physical books. Miles will continue collecting titles, I'm sure, but they will be digital and invisible to anyone visiting his room - or future home.

Over the past several years, my physical book collection has shrunk by 90%. I have a few favorite paperbacks of fiction that I know I will one day re-read, a few influential business/technology books, some travel guides, and a small collection of old books that I inherited from long dead relatives, including my grandmother's Webster's Second Unabridged Dictionary (c1945) that could easily double as a coffee table.

I am perfectly happy to read and collect digital books. For me, the "book" is not about the object but about  ideas and stories and emotions and experience. I've no real attachment to any one printed iteration of a particular work for a  long time.

Fifty Shades of Grey supposedly gained popularity because it was being accessed via e-book readers. The person sitting next to you at your kid's ball game wouldn't know that you were dipping into badly written pornography. Sounds about right. Unless I advertise it on GoodReads, nobody really would know what I was reading either given that I read only e-books.

I like this privacy, and I also believe such privacy is good for our struggling readers. Children are often embarrassed by their reading level, when forced to choose books others may view as written for younger readers. Carrying a device allows one to read at one's ability level without fear of ridicule.

I respect, but don't understand, those for whom the physical object of the book is paramount. Keep collecting. It's good for the paper and bookshelf industries.

Just make sure to hide your tasteless volumes.

Original post 9/21/15

BFTP: Make love of reading the first objective

The myths we allow ourselves to believe about reading will continue to shape the reading lives of those we teach.  We have to stop ourselves from harming the reading experience.  We have to take control of what we say, what we do, and what we think because our students are the ones being affected.  We have a tremendous power to destroy the very reading identity we say we want to develop.  It stops now.  It stops with us. Stop Feeding the Beast – The Reading Myths We Pass on As Truth - Pernille Ripp

I think we teachers are part of the problem.  I think our silence while we seethe inside at the new initiatives being dictated to us means that we are now complicit in the killing of the love of reading.  I think we have sat idly by for too long as others have told us that students will love reading more if we limit them further and guide them more.   We have held our tongue while practices have been marched into our classrooms disguised by words like research-based, rigorous, and common-core aligned.  We have held our tight smiles as so called experts sold our districts more curriculum, more things to do, more interventions, more repetitions.  We have stayed silent because we were afraid of how our words would be met, and I cannot blame any of us.  Standing up and speaking out is terrifying, especially if you are speaking out against something within your own district.  But we cannot afford to stay silent any more.  With the onslaught of more levels, more logs, more things to do with what they read all in the name of deeper understanding, we have to speak up.  Reading is about time to read first.  Not all of the other things.  And if we are sacrificing time to read to instead teach children more strategies,, then we are truly missing the point of what we we should be doing. Enough... It is time for us to Become Reading Warriers - Pernille Ripp

I don't know about you, but... 

• I did not become a reader because someone held me accountable for reading. 

• I did not become a reader because someone offered me "points" or other incentives for the quantity of books or pages I read. 

• I did not become a reader because someone limited my reading selections to only to those titles on a certain reading level or within a specific lexile band. 

• And I did not become a reader because someone forced me to complete reading logs, write book reports or create (and then reuse) the occasional diorama. Learning to Read Alone is Not Enough. Your Students Need a Reading Champion - Jennifer LaGuarde

Each of these posts emphasize that teaching the skills of reading is not enough. We also need to make sure our students love to read as well. Read in full each of these posts. I'll wait...

I've always proclaimed that classroom teachers teach kids how to read; librarians teach kids to love to read. No, it's not that simple. You won't love to read unless you have some fundamental reading skills, and you won't read well unless you like to read. Emotions and skills are interdependent.

Each year, I hope more classroom teachers (and policy-makers) realize that the love of reading is as important as the skills of reading. And I hope there are librarians in every school to put the right book into the right hand at the right time for every child. That remind parents and teachers and administrators that free voluntary reading improves test scores. But that the love of reading is in and of itself a very good thing.

Like my friend Jennifer LaGarde cited above, I too can remember significant adults who stirred my passion for reading:

• Both my grandmothers who read aloud to me. And my mother was a role model for reading as a pleasant pastime.
• A school superintendent to whose office I was sent when I became intolerable in the elementary classroom and would pull down sample literature textbooks for me to read while serving my time out in her office.
• A public librarian who allowed me to check out adult mythology books after acknowledging that I had read all the books of myths and legends in the children's collection.

I am sure there were others who inculcated my love of reading. To those unmentioned, thank you as well.

Would I have learned to read were I in school today? Were I to have to take a test after reading every chapter? Were I not allowed to read materials of my choice? Were I in competition with other students on how many pages I'd read? (I am not a real fast reader.) Were I given candy or a toy or a sticker each time I read a book?

A common mantra among educators is "all children can learn." This seems a rather shallow and a very low bar. All chickens "can learn" when rewarded with a kernel of corn for pecking the correct lever. Why doesn't our goal become "all children will love to learn" and make the love of reading our first objective?

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Original post 8/18/15