I’ve been working in environments with closed circuit televisions in them for the majority of my working life. My boss when I was a lowly sandwich maker had cameras set up to watch us when we dropped money into the safe. This was supposed to prevent the massive amount of fraud and theft that was happening at our store location. All it really did was make us more creative when we were bored as hell at work and needed to find a place to be unseen. I wasn’t stealing anything, but the system didn’t actually do much other than record a grainy 24 hour tape that was never looked at before it was taped over again.
My second school in Korea also had cameras. This meant that student’s parents could come into the office and watch us teaching their children, and how they behaved in class. There was no recording feature, and parents had to come to the school to see what was happening down the hallway. Unless the student was a complete moron, they usually weren’t going to misbehave when they knew their mother is down the hall, watching or not. The cameras in the classroom were positioned to watch the students and board, and usually were above the bookcases. I usually sat on the bookcases since I wasn’t technically "allowed" to sit down on the job all day. All parents saw were students staring in the direction of the camera and the top of my head.
Fast forward. My current job has cameras with monitors in the director’s office. They used to be the same style system as at my second school, but recently they got upgraded. Now they run to one single monitor that can be used to zoom, watch many classrooms at once, or monitor all the classes at the same time. The most disturbing thing about this is that it also monitors the teacher’s room as well as the classrooms, so our director can watch everything we say and do at work. The only thing not being monitored currently at the school are, to my knowledge, the director’s room, the secretaries’ desk (ironically, since they have the money), and the hallways. Storage rooms and other non-critical spaces are also left unmonitored.
I’ve been fine with cameras in the class because I run a tight ship, don’t do anything bad, and don’t waste time. On occasion the director will swoop into my class, grab a student that was misbehaving, and yell at them outside them with the force of an imploding sun. This alone will scare the other kids straight. "How did she know?" they will ask each other. I’ll point at the cameras and all is explained. It gets to a point where you don’t even remember the cameras. There is so much footage, and the chance that anyone is watching what you are doing at any one particular moment is so slim, you forget they exist. They are there, subtly changing your behavior, but never a concern in your mind when you do your job. It’s simply an occupational annoyance.
The final twist is this is somewhat unsettling to me now. Due to another significant upgrade to the camera system, not only can my director watch us at work all times, but she can watch us over the Internet, and record what we do all day as well. Remote viewing, as well as recording. The end is extremely fucking nigh for privacy. Now our boss doesn’t even have to be at work to have a record of what we do or say at all times. While the entire teaching staff watched in horror, the man installing the system went on to show her how to check any point of the day. There was a fight in one of the classes earlier. She told him to rewind to an hour ago and show what happened in the classroom. We got to see ourselves teaching, the students arriving for the next class, and the fight breaking out. Everything was being recorded with sound in every classroom. Everything.
My foreign coworker and I both had rather low opinions of the uses of this gadgetry. If parents are given access to such a system, it could be a truly terrible thing. It’s one thing to have to deal with a director sniping at you when they think you’ve done something they don’t like. It’s totally another when a parent is given the ability to stalk the teacher and tell them how to do their job. The first time I am given "teaching tips" by a parent that’s watched me via the Internet, heads will roll.
The absolutely worst thing is the fact that the teacher’s room is being watched. We already work in a glass cage, surrounded by windows that let the students watch us like fish in an aquarium. Now the director can listen and record everything that happens in the room. My two Korean coworkers spend most of the time between classes complaining about the impossible demands our director makes. Now, all that will be recorded and possibly publicly available. Imagine every off hand comment, sigh, or nasty look for all to see, and recorded for your director, who controls your salary. The only way we’ll be able to speak our minds freely at work will be to sneak off to an unwatched corner or go outside.
Parents will love the access it will give to their children. They’ll be able to review what their children learn, see if their teachers are doing a good job, and watch their children’s behavior at home. Any and all incidents will be explained before anyone needs to "call home". There will be a record of any wrongdoings that can be laid out as proof of someone’s misdeeds. There are tremendous benefits to bringing cameras to classrooms if you are the parents or administrators, but it makes teachers even further subjects of scrutiny.
I do all I can to earn my salary, do the best I can, and teach with as much enthusiasm as possible, and I don’t expect any problems with my performance at work. However, I find cameras in the classroom loathsome when I’m not told the conditions in which they operate, who they are available to, in what instances they can or can’t be used. I don’t know who is watching me, why they are watching me, how long they can watch me, or what will happen as a result of them watching me. That’s frankly terrifying, even if I am a good teacher. The whole "nothing to hide" argument wins no points with me.
