Surveillance Schools : Security, Discipline and Control in Contemporary Education PDF

With the growth of surveillance practices and technologies globally, Taylor focuses on the phenomena of the Surveillance School and the impact that invasive and continual monitoring is having upon school children. Surveillance Schools are characterised by routine practices that identify, verify, categorise and track pupils.

From visual technologies such as CCTV; biometric technologies including fingerprinting and iris scanning; microchips in ID cards and smart uniforms which monitor pupil's movements on and off the school premises; to police officers patrolling schools with sniffer dogs, schools have become increasingly fortified.

Taylor analyses the effect of this fortification, arguing that evidence emerging from empirical studies suggests that often these technologies do little to safeguard young people, do not represent financial savings or increased efficiency, but serve to strip pupils of their privacy, undermine their trust in others and create an atmosphere of suspicion. This insightful research ultimately questions whether the incessant use of omnipresent technological surveillance has the ability to displace the very building blocks of democratic society, using schools as a microcosm of society to provide a prophetic glance into the future.