School-bus video cameras - a good idea?

0 Comments | Current Events, Jan 9, 1995

The Norwich, Conn., middle school student denied that he had been fighting on a school bus. His mother defended him. So the student, his mother, and the school district superintendent looked at a videotape of the incident together. The tape plainly showed the student banging another boy's head against a window. "I forgot about that," was all the accused student could say.

Nineteen of Connecticut's 166 school districts are now using video cameras on at least some of their school buses. Last fall, Delaware became the first state to install the devices statewide. School districts elsewhere in the country have started using video-cameras, often rotating a limited number of cameras among school buses.

Just about everyone agrees that the devices cut down on rowdiness. In Palm Beach County, Fla., evidence from video cameras led to the suspension of nearly 400 students from bus travel last year. Overall, student behavior improved. "Once the kids get word that misbehavior on the bus won't be tolerated, it ends," said an official who helps oversee transportation.

But some people think putting video cameras on buses is a bad idea. "The cameras get everything you do," says a Delaware student. "That's like being in jail." "The cost here is teaching our children that they live in a fish bowl," says Prof. John Turley of George Washington University disapprovingly; "that as individuals they're subject to surveillance and accountability by somebody behind the [video camera]."

What do you think? Are video cameras on school buses a good idea?