By Arnold Ahlert ——Bio and Archives--June 7, 2013
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"But of course, an RFID chip allows for far more than that minimal record-keeping. Instead, it provides the potential for nearly constant monitoring of a child's physical location. If readings are taken often enough, you could create an extraordinarily detailed portrait of a child's school day--one that's easy to imagine being misused, particularly as the chips substitute for direct adult monitoring and judgment. If RFID records show a child moving around a lot, could she be tagged as hyper-active? If he doesn't move around a lot, could he get a reputation for laziness?"Creating an extraordinarily detailed portrait, not of a child's day, but of the child himself, is called "data mining." Fast forward to 2013, and the Obama administration's Common Core educational program. Or what they're billing as an educational program. The merits of the curriculum, a troubling question in and of itself, is a subject for another day. On the other hand, if this expose of Common Core's data mining initiative doesn't get your blood pressure pumping, you're either brain-dead, or every bit the totalitarian these government jackboots would love every American to become. Try this:
"Data mining. States who have adopted Common Core to continue being eligible for Obama's 'Race to the Top' federal funding will be obliged to implement a State Longitudinal Database System (SLDS) used to track students. They will track students by obtaining personally identifiable information which will involve a huge violation of privacy. The information collected will not only include the student's test scores and perhaps other measures of academic proficiency, but will be much more extensive, including demographic, emotional, and psychological data. How will some of this data be collected? Students will be extensively questioned, while being observed by facial-monitoring equipment and by sensors strapped to their bodies. They will also be neuro-psychologically tested. In its February report, the US Dept. of Education displayed photographs of the actual technology that will be used on students, when the department's plan is fully implemented. What they call the 'four parallel streams of affective sensors' will be employed to effectively 'measure' each child. The 'facial expression camera,' for instance, 'is a device that can be used to detect emotion.... The camera captures facial expressions, and software on the laptop extracts geometric properties on faces.' Other devices, such as the 'posture analysis seat,' 'pressure mouse,' and 'wireless skin conductance sensor,' which looks like a wide, black bracelet strapped to a child's wrist, are all designed to collect 'physiological response data from a biofeedback apparatus that measures blood volume, pulse, and galvanic skin response to examine student frustration.'"Had enough? Too bad, there more: "'Personally Identifiable Information' will be extracted from each student, which will include the following data: parents' names, address, Social Security Number, date of birth, place of birth, mother's maiden name, etc. On the other hand, according to the SLDS brief, 'Sensitive Information' will also be extracted, which delves into the intimate details of students' lives: 1. Political affiliations or beliefs of the student or parent; 2. Mental and psychological problems of the student or the student's family; 3. Sex behavior or attitudes; 4. Illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating, and demeaning behavior; 5. Critical appraisals of other individuals with whom respondents have close family relationships; 6. Legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers; 7. Religious practices, affiliations, or beliefs of the student or the student's parent; or 8. Income (other than that required by law to determine eligibility for participation in a program or for receiving financial assistance under such program). Now ask yourself one question. How would you feel being strapped up like a lab rat and having every emotional tell of your personality monitored, and then placed in a database that could be sold to various companies--or maintained by the government? Sadly, there is no question in my mind that millions of parents will subject their children to this outrage, out of ignorance--or a willing accommodation to the Brave New World of Common Core standards. As the previous stories in the column indicate, they and their children been groomed to do so for years. And when their little darlings graduate high school, college campuses, up to their own collective eyeballs in anti-Constutional speech codes await. Speech codes that essentially elevate the "right" not to be offended above that quaint anachronism we call the First Amendment. For the umpteenth time I will warn my fellow Americans: the nation's educational institutions are the central battleground for the nation's soul. It is a battleground where the American left is doggedly determined to turn America's younger generations into people with no concept whatsoever of personal privacy, even as a reverence for the collective, aka the "greater good" is unrelentingly nurtured. The evidence of their handiwork is everywhere. The most blatant manifestation is the reality that kids can no longer do simple mathematical calculations such as making change. While their ignorance is mildly amusing, it represents a paradigm shift in the way people think for one overriding reason: math is the gateway to logic. Rob a child of the ability to think logically and anything becomes possible. Especially totalitarianism.
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Arnold Ahlert was an op-ed columist with the NY Post for eight years.