The project to install CCTV cameras in school classrooms has sparked a lively debate

Those teachers who are accustomed to doing something “unregulated” during lessons are against it.

Mikhail Vetrov, Chairman of the Association of Manufacturers of Children’s Products, proposed installing video surveillance cameras in every school classroom to “minimize conflict situations.” And he sent a letter about this to the head of the Ministry of Education. The essence of the innovation is to record incidents involving teachers and students from beginning to end, in order to avoid misunderstandings.

The proposal is timely – any day now the State Duma will hold hearings on a bill to protect the dignity and improve the professional status of teachers. As you know, one of its most controversial points was the ban on the use of telephones by students at school without the permission of the teacher.

Many copies have been broken around this ban. On the one hand, it really happened that teenagers had conflicts with the teacher, causing a conflict, deliberately provoking them in order to shoot a trash video.

On the other hand, it was only thanks to audio and video recording on the phone that it became known about blatant abuse of children, for example, in a correctional boarding school for hearing-impaired and deaf children in Yakutia, where teachers beat and humiliated disabled people. Next came a scandal in a correctional school for children with disabilities, where children were humiliated verbally, but in such a way that even the lawyers’ hairs were moving on their heads.

Thanks to students’ gadgets, over the past year or two we have learned that in cadet schools they can hit you with a whip, and in the “headroom” children are called suckers, homeless people, scum and other persons with reduced social responsibility. That at school a child can have his nose, ribs broken or given a traumatic brain injury not only by his classmates, but also by the teacher. A separate article concerns pedophiles, who were also exposed through evidence recorded on the phone.

But if smartphones in children’s pockets really harm the educational process and discredit teachers, cameras are a good solution. And it would be nice if these were real-time cameras, and parents also had access to them during the day. The price of the issue is not that high. They equip, or rather equip, the most modern video surveillance cameras at the Unified State Examination points; they even use AI systems. And here we are talking about regular video shooting.

Cameras in classrooms have been discussed more than once on teachers’ forums. The majority of teachers are in favor. Precisely because recording what is happening in class can help prove innocence in the event of some squabble, scandalous parents or aggressor children. Only those teachers who are used to doing something “non-statutory” during class are opposed: drinking tea and eating sandwiches, putting on makeup, reading magazines…

And, of course, in the process of “video recording” of schools throughout the country, I would like to do without fanaticism. Many people remember the incident in Primorye, where at the end of October the director installed a video camera in the student toilet, and for girls. The official explanation is that teenagers smoke and behave hooligans, so they installed cameras. Unofficial – fear for brand new school property in the new flagship building of the school.

Along the way, it turned out that this was not a precedent – back in 2018, in Komi they also installed a camera for children in the toilet. In a conversation with MK, one Siberian mother admitted that they also have a camera in the toilet at school, and all the parents warmly approve of it…

“Unlike cameras in toilets, which violate privacy, cameras in the classroom are absolutely legal,” says lawyer Stanislav Popov. “Moreover, it is the absence of cameras in classrooms and corridors that violates the rights of students according to several standards at once. Here are the Law “On Education”, and the safety requirements of the technical regulations of schools, and the Constitution, finally, in terms of health protection. I don’t know what about real-time cameras, but schools can not only equip classrooms with at least ordinary ones with recording and registration, but are also obliged to do so.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29159 dated November 17, 2023

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