Tracking Students With Microchips
As if the ugly uniforms weren’t enough, now a private school is considering using RFID chips to track its students,...
As if the ugly uniforms weren’t enough, now a private school is considering using RFID chips to track its students, too. At a school in South Yorkshire, UK, officials are testing a new system that tracks whether students are in a given classroom or not, and can also cut off access to certain areas of the school.
The radio-frequency identification tags tell the students’ teachers whether or not they’re in the building, and call up other critical data, such as photos and behavioral records, in the event that the teacher forgets who he or she is dealing with. Ten kids have been wearing the chips for eight months. And you have to wonder if any of them have been asked to read 1984 yet.—Gregory Mone