Multiple people have sent me a link to this story about a professor suspended for comments on Facebook. Perhaps a majority of social-network-site privacy stories I come across now involve discipline against teachers or students for saying allegedly disruptive things online. This tells us something, I think, about the school as a leading edge of the modern surveillance society.
‘the school as a leading edge of the modern surveillance society’ -
a very disturbing idea. Why the school in particular, do you think?
We are seeing this in a different form in the UK in the new regulations for foreign students and visiting academics.
These obligations have led to a growth of surveillance systems within universities:
– Universities including Lancaster, Nottingham and the University of Wales at Lampeter are asking academics for their passports, when they give visiting lectures or act as an external examiner;
– Universities including Sheffield and Queen Mary have introduced electronic registers for all students, to monitor attendance. – Manifesto Club, Fortress Academy