Yet More US School Paranoia.

Remember, spying on teenagers behind a bush or with a pair of binoculours is weird. Whereas, spying on teenagers via school computers is perfectly acceptable. Rememeber, it's for your own good:

A school district in Pennsylvania spied on students through web cameras installed on laptops provided by the district, according to a class action lawsuit filed this week.

Lower Merion school district, in a well-heeled suburb of Philadelphia, provided 2,300 high-school students with Mac laptops last autumn in what its superintendent, Christopher McGinley, described as an effort to establish a "mobile, 21st-century learning environment"...

...The district retained remote control of the built-in webcams installed on the computers – and used them to capture images of the students, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court this week.

The ruse was revealed when Blake Robbins, a student at Harriton high school, was hauled into the assistant principal Lindy Matsko's office, shown a photograph taken on the laptop in his home and disciplined for "improper behaviour"...

...n a letter posted on the school district's website, McGinley said the district had installed on the laptops a security feature that allowed the webcam to photograph the computer operator in the event the laptop is lost or stolen. He said that following the suit's filing, the district disabled the feature amidst a review of technology and privacy policies. He said the feature was activated only to help locate a lost or stolen laptop.

"The district never activated the security feature for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever," he wrote. "We regret if this situation has caused any concern or inconvenience among our students and families."

You only get such sincere apologies from people who've been caught out. It does raise a pertinent question though, especially in the CCTV-sodden UK (and London, where you can't scratch your nose without being spotted). Why do we so easily submit to surveillance, even though we don't know who's at the other end? Paranoia makes us vulnerable to the real thing, it seems.

Intolerable Zero Tolerance.

While this blog likes to stay firmly in the UK, and in London, sometimes there is a news story from abroad that compels it to vomit out epic torrents of outrage and bile.

This is one such story.

Alexa Gonzalez, an outgoing 12-year-old who likes to dance and draw, expected a lecture or maybe detention for her doodles earlier this month. Instead, the principal of the Junior High School in Forest Hills, New York, called police, and the seventh-grader was taken across the street to the police precinct.

Alexa's hands were cuffed behind her back, and tears gushed as she was escorted from school in front of teachers and - the worst audience of all for a preadolescent girl - her classmates.

"They put the handcuffs on me, and I couldn't believe it," Alexa recalled. "I didn't want them to see me being handcuffed, thinking I'm a bad person."

Still it's a slippery slope from just scribbling on a desk to going tonto in the canteen with an AK-47, amirite? Alexa, it's obviously for your own good that you're humiliated in front of your classmates and be so traumatised you then spend the next three days "throwing up". America has to make sure its children are safe and don't live in fear!

After all, according to this prize plonker, Zero Tolerance is A Good Thing:

Kenneth Trump, a security expert who founded the National School Safety and Security Services consulting firm, said focusing on security is essential to the safety of other students. He said zero tolerance policies can work if "common sense is applied."

Two things spring to mind. Firstly, there's some weird double think going on if you can honestly combine 'common sense' and 'zero tolerance'in the same sentence. One suggests moderation and nuance, whilst the other signifies extremity and a simple minded black-and-white morality.

Secondly, there's something pretty dodgy about having a URL, as Ken Trump does, like http://www.schoolshootingexpert.com/ - hardly reassuring, is it? It presumes the worst case scenario and suggests you should too. So does having a company named: "National School Safety and Security Services" which offers "school security and emergency preparedness training". And it's not meant to be reassuring, because here we have the commodification of panic, where our darkest fears are sold back to us. Worse, like most products, we are not just being sold the solution but also the problem - we are being convinced to be afraid.

And yet school shootings and other such events make the news precisely because they are so rare, and so newsworthy. The mistake we make with the news and which the news lets us make is to assume the unusual is in fact everyday or ever-more likely. But it's not - you are very unlikely to die in a school shooting in the US, at least if the Center for Disease Control is to be believed. Meanwhile, in the UK, 40% of road deaths are in the 15-25 group (who only have about 12.5% of all driving licences issued). Back in the US, drivers in the 15-24 age bracket consitutute only 14% of the population but account for 30% of all injuries amongst male drivers - in 2008 alone, this amounted to the deaths of 3500 young people, compared to 323 deaths from school shootings between 1992-1997.

One death is always one too many, but where is the outrage for all those who die young and in an RTA? The ugly truth is that while school shootings are exciting, rare and - from a journalistic perspective - 'sexy', deaths in traffic accidents are mundane, everyday, and of little interest (except for those directly effected.) Perverse but true - not all dead teenagers are equal. Such irrationality leads the debate and in doing so distorts our view of it.

This brings us back to Zero Tolerance, which seeks to apply extreme responses to extreme events to the everyday and the typical. It should go without saying that this is absurd, but since when has reason ever counted in debates like this?

The real question we should be having is whether schools are the healthiest environments for children to grow up in, whether leaving our young in a state of perpetual in loco parentis really helps much, or whether a 19th century model of top-down, hierachical learning really is the best way for children to learn. But that's another blogpost, another rant, another day.

Doctor Who: The End of Time - An 'I Can't Be Arsed To Write Much' Review.

Last night's Doctor Who - was it good? Yes, no and maybe - but you're a walking corpse if those last five words didn't break your heart and the Tennant/Cribbins double act didn't leave you in awe. At its best, which I'm happy to say was most of the time, it recaptured the initial magic and excitement of the far too quickly forgotten Eccleston era. It was an end worth mourning.

Anyway, these two very disparate reviews HERE and HERE say pretty much what I was going to write anyway, so read them instead. Let us now prepare to be enthralled or horribly disappointed as Laird Moffat and his Time Toddler begin their reign.

Winter in Harrow.

A view of the park near the University of Westminster's Harrow Campus and Northwick Park hospital, as taken from the platform at Northwick Park Tube station.

Labouring The Point About The Tories.

The overall consensus is that the Conservative Party will win the next UK General Election, due to take place some time next year. What puzzles many pundits, however, is what the opinion polls say. The Tories are in the lead but only by a margin of around 10%, which will translate into either a workable Tory majority in parliament, a small majority for them or, possibly, a hung parliament, and this lead will fluctuate ever more as the election draws near.

Political commentator Peter Oborne believes this is because the Tory leader David Cameron is not inspiring enough of the electorate, that Team Cameron is not invoking the sort of passion that Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher did. I believe however that the answer is more prosaic. We are delusional and ghastly, ghastly hypocrites.

Labour survives against the odds because we want it to be something it's not. There is an odd mix of nostalgia for a time that never was and a blind faith in the never-never that explains why Labour hasn't ceased to exist. Lots of its supporters, and indeed the rest of the public, murmur dewy-eyed epithets over Labour achievements: the Welfare State, the NHS, the People's Party, the minimum wage, increased public spending...

The other half to this is a vain, always disappointed belief that all it takes is one good Labour government, Goddammit, and we'll all be living in a paradise free of poverty, waiting lists, despair or fear. This mentality is akin to blighted peasants in the Middle Ages praying for a better life in the next - it all seems much more feasible than facing up to the now and how to remedy it with what we have. Gordon Brown is simply a modern version of the hypocritical, corrupt, whoring local priest that everyone feels sorry for because deep down they really want to believe he's a good man and that at least he means well.

But for some reason, while odious acts like ID Cards, the Iraq War, Labour Sleaze, John Prescott in his many manifestations and - not to mention - the Winter of Discontent, rationing carrying on into the early 50s, political militancy, betrayal of values, shrill lefty dogma, the Orwellian Ministry of Works, student top-up fees, an appalling record in government and punitive taxes all upset people, they don't seem to dominate the public imagination as examples of villainy as the Tories do.

For that matter, while everyone curses the Tories, they don't really factor in things like economic booms, rising home ownership, unions made to behave, higher living standards and so on. True, these are often double edged swords, but so are many of Labour's contributions, and it seems odd that we focus more on the Tories' failings despite benefiting from the good things they have done as well as Labour's own positive contributions.

It all comes down to guilt. We feel that we should be Good, and in a post-war British context that means Left of Centre, redistributive and nice and fluffy (many people seem to think these all go together). Which is what Labour represents, or at least what we'd like it to represent. But on the other hand, we feel like we have to be pragmatic, self-serving, ruthless and money grubbing, all of which the Tories represent in the popular imagination.

Hating the Tories helps us ignore the sneaking suspision that we might need them, that their 'nasty party' vibe is actually how the world works and, let's be honest, reflects a lot of the miserly, small-minded, shallow and vindictive elements of the British character. We're ashamed of this, so vote in or support a party that we believe reflects our less savoury urges and then spend the rest of the time hurling invective at it.

And this is why we remember Tory excesses more than Labour excesses, because they confirm comforting beliefs and prejudices and also let us pretend that that a Blakeian Jerusalem is just round the corner. Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair didn't just vote themselves in - the electorate and its own dishonesty has much to answer for, which is probably why screaming 'TORY BASTARDS!!!' makes us feel so much better.

The ultimate example of this cognitive dissonance is how we've remembered the old Liberal Party. Which is to say, we broadly haven't. We've forgotten minor details like the extension of the franchise (without which Labour would be stuffed like a turkey), social reforms, an end to child labour, removal of power from the Crown, the aristocracy and the Church and, lest we forget, the earliest incarnation of the bless'd Welfare State. Why is this? In part, it was a long time ago and our memories are, naturally, self serving. Labour has become the forlorn hope of a 'better' future, as previously mentioned, so another reforming force in British politics just confuses many people, or it rather muddies an easy, convenient political narrative that people can buy into. It also rather gets in the way of the dualism we've come to rely on - evil Tories, goody Labour, but the Liberals..? This is why the Lib Dems will probably remain the 'third party' for the foreseeable future. We don't strictly speaking want a third choice, beyond a handy protest vote or a sop to politics we know will never be realised.

For what it matters, Labour will probably lose simply because enough of the country wants or needs a change and because they've upset just too many of those voters who would normally support them. The next step will be for Labour to elect a leader we can invest our vain hopes in, who can gleam in the purity of opposition and who can let us keep believing that the Promised Land is but an election away... And the Tories? Well, they say electorates get the governments they deserve.

The Trouble with Jauss

I have studied the works of Hans Rudi Jauss at some depth, I even based a large section of my PhD thesis' arguments on his theories. I probably owe my doctorate in part to him. But I didn't really know what he did during World War Two until recently.

From 1939 to 1945 he was a member of the Waffen SS, declared a criminal organisation at Nuremberg. But what did Jauss have to say for himself in this matter? Just before his death in 1997, he gave an interview to Le Monde - far from an open and unambiguous acknowledgement of responsibility, it seems to be an attempt to blur the lines, and obfuscate or perhaps skip around the issue. This reached almost comical heights, as the following quoted paragraph demonstrates. All footnotes and emphases are mine:

Before I turn to the history of a young German who was seventeen years old when the war started [1], I would like to remind people that there are at least three ways of understanding history [2]: the history that unfolds in the present, in which one finds oneself engaged as an actor; the history into which one finds oneself passively propelled [3], as a witness so to speak; and finally, the history that has taken place and become an object of reflection. When one attempts to examine one’s own past, those three levels may overlap, but recomposition through memory prevails. [4] What persuaded me to enter the Waffen-SS was not really an adherence to Nazi ideology. [5] As the son of a teacher, member of the petty bourgeoisie, I was a young man who wanted to conform with the atmosphere of the time. [6] That said, I had read Spengler’s Decline of the West, written by an author banned by the Nazis, and it had made me skeptical of the Hitlerian empire. [7] But along with other future historians — I’m thinking of my friends Reinhart Koselleck and Arno Borst — what we had in common was the desire not to stand apart from current events. [8] One had to be present in the field, where history was being made, [9] by participating in the war. In our view, to do otherwise would have been to flee, to confine ourselves within an aesthetic attitude, while our comrades of the same age were risking their lives. [10]

[1] Still old enough to know better.
[2] As opposed to what really happened.
[3] Nothing just happens in uniform.
[4] How convenient.
[5] What?
[6] Why didn't you join the Wehrmacht instead?
[7] So skeptical, in fact, that you joined the Waffen SS.
[8] Why not?
[9] And people were being killed.
[10] There's a hell of a difference between a volunteer and a conscript.

Not putting too fine a point about it, the Waffen SS was notable for a whole swathe of war crimes against regular and irregular combatants, in addition to unarmed men, women and children. The blood of millions is on their hands. Not to mention it was home to outfits like the SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, as lead into battle by a paedophile and which included mass rape, mutilation, immolation and throwing and then bayoneting live babies on its list of extra-curricular activities.

Of course, Jauss himself was imprisoned and then subsequently released without charge. But it's telling that only those conscripted into the Waffen SS after 1943 (often literally at the point of a bayonet) recieve standard veterans' pensions and benefits from the German government. Before then, you were more likely than not a volunteer, like Jauss. He was perhaps keen to distance himself both mentally and ethically from this fact:

The letters from my youth, sent from the front— I couldn’t reread them for a long time. When I finally did reread them, I was caught off guard by a young man who had become a stranger, whom I could not recognize as myself.

But he was that young man. They were not strangers because they were the same person. Another thing Jauss said in that interview was "my experience at the time was compartmentalized and my horizons limited", a state of affairs that arguably persisted to his death. It also applied to me, blinded but not absolved by the narrow focus of the doctoral process. Perhaps that is why Jauss found his home in academia so easily - scholarship, after all, is a selective act of remembering.

Language Use That Really Annoys Me #5 - Euphemisms.

The postman was let go after he upset a differently abled person and said rude things to a person of colour, asking if she wanted to discuss Uganda. He subsequently returned, tired and emotional, and proceeded to make his colleagues pass away in a hail of bullets. I immediately spent a penny in my unmentionables as he pointed the weapon of mass destruction at my head and asked me if I was in some distress. I said yes, at which point the local Police Service applied reasonable force by making him pass away via a major head trauma.

'This was an unfortunate incident!' the police officer said as he pondered the collateral damage inflicted in the process. 'To think I was about to request extraordinary rendition on this illegal combatant!' I agreed wholeheartedly.

Returning home, I decided to have a small tipple in the pub to celebrate and let my hair down. Unfortunately, I let my hair down just a tad too much and had a little accident when my car had a frank exchange of views with a brick wall. I then proceeded to discuss the matter further with the paramedics, accusing one of being vertically challenged and good with colours and the other one a big boned fan of comfortable shoes. See you next tuesday, the male parademic said, as the police service arrived. I was then detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure for a period until eventually I had to discuss the matter with the two naughty boys I shared my cell with.

"You need to expand your consciousness with the food of the Gods", one naughty boy said to me, handing over a jazz cigarette. "Yes, and facilitate alternative lifestyles through non-mainstream distribution channels" said the other, pulling some Columbian Marching Powder out of his chocolate starfish.

Eventually, however, I became unwell and had a nasty accident with some razor blades. Let off early so I could get some help, I found myself in hospital next to a woman with a fuller figure. "Are you in the family way?" I asked coyly. "Nah, dear, I've got f**king stomach cancer" she replied, somewhat tactlessly.