Post by Moses on Dec 30, 2005 3:00:14 GMT -5
Restroom cameras go too far
By Tom Keating
Why can't public schools curtail vandalism and maintain cleanliness in student bathrooms and still respect privacy?
At least three recent news stories highlighted cameras in school restrooms. One story described a camera discovered by a student in the ceiling of a boys' bathroom in Jasper County, Ga.
Yes, schools must protect against bullying, vandalism and obscene graffiti. Still, our cultural mores expect a degree of privacy in restrooms.
We watch kids via video monitors, guard them with police, resource officers, campus supervisors and chaperones, inspect their lockers with drug dogs. We are training too many to be prisoners and too few to be citizens.
While almost everyone can attest to a restroom horror story, school officials have engaged few students in how to keep nice restrooms.
What perplexes me after working a decade on improving the safety, cleanliness and hygiene of student restrooms is the lack of effective instruction and administrative leadership.
Children need to breathe, eat, sleep and go the bathroom. When an estimated 43 percent of middle and high school students avoid restrooms in their buildings, something is wrong. Starting with soap, tissue, towels and water, how does staff instruct and lead by example so more students become self-governing citizens?
I can hear the clichéd refrains: We have no time. We have too much to do. It all starts at home. We are professionals.
I grant educators are stretched thin. Yet we made enough time after Sept. 11 to teach dramatic lessons; we can substitute complaining time so we can teach some critical health lessons.
Children do start their learning at home, yet they come to school by law, and we have an obligation to teach life's lessons. Since teachers won't monitor or voluntarily use student restrooms for the most part, why can't the health, civics, science, math and language instructors teach lessons using restrooms as a source of examples?
It would be helpful if more schools recorded and openly reported the cost of vandalism in certain restrooms per semester. One Georgia high school kept such statistics over four semesters and saw a large decrease in money spent for torn-up accessories.
Why has only one school district in Georgia written an expectation statement about restrooms in its student conduct handbook?
Have any systems incorporated safe, clean hygienic restroom provisions into their "wellness policies" due in every district by July 2006? [?! -- "Wellness Policies"?]
Some of my fellow educators with 35 or more years experience can remember the famous Supreme Court decision in Tinker, which declared that students and teachers did not shed their constitutional rights of freedom of speech at the schoolhouse gate.
I am afraid that the dearth of effective instruction about proper bathroom behavior may cause students to shed their privacy rights at the restroom door.
Tom Keating of Decatur is coordinator of Project CLEAN, — Tom Keating
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
2005-12-28
By Tom Keating
Why can't public schools curtail vandalism and maintain cleanliness in student bathrooms and still respect privacy?
At least three recent news stories highlighted cameras in school restrooms. One story described a camera discovered by a student in the ceiling of a boys' bathroom in Jasper County, Ga.
Yes, schools must protect against bullying, vandalism and obscene graffiti. Still, our cultural mores expect a degree of privacy in restrooms.
We watch kids via video monitors, guard them with police, resource officers, campus supervisors and chaperones, inspect their lockers with drug dogs. We are training too many to be prisoners and too few to be citizens.
While almost everyone can attest to a restroom horror story, school officials have engaged few students in how to keep nice restrooms.
What perplexes me after working a decade on improving the safety, cleanliness and hygiene of student restrooms is the lack of effective instruction and administrative leadership.
Children need to breathe, eat, sleep and go the bathroom. When an estimated 43 percent of middle and high school students avoid restrooms in their buildings, something is wrong. Starting with soap, tissue, towels and water, how does staff instruct and lead by example so more students become self-governing citizens?
I can hear the clichéd refrains: We have no time. We have too much to do. It all starts at home. We are professionals.
I grant educators are stretched thin. Yet we made enough time after Sept. 11 to teach dramatic lessons; we can substitute complaining time so we can teach some critical health lessons.
Children do start their learning at home, yet they come to school by law, and we have an obligation to teach life's lessons. Since teachers won't monitor or voluntarily use student restrooms for the most part, why can't the health, civics, science, math and language instructors teach lessons using restrooms as a source of examples?
It would be helpful if more schools recorded and openly reported the cost of vandalism in certain restrooms per semester. One Georgia high school kept such statistics over four semesters and saw a large decrease in money spent for torn-up accessories.
Why has only one school district in Georgia written an expectation statement about restrooms in its student conduct handbook?
Have any systems incorporated safe, clean hygienic restroom provisions into their "wellness policies" due in every district by July 2006? [?! -- "Wellness Policies"?]
Some of my fellow educators with 35 or more years experience can remember the famous Supreme Court decision in Tinker, which declared that students and teachers did not shed their constitutional rights of freedom of speech at the schoolhouse gate.
I am afraid that the dearth of effective instruction about proper bathroom behavior may cause students to shed their privacy rights at the restroom door.
Tom Keating of Decatur is coordinator of Project CLEAN, — Tom Keating
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
2005-12-28