[jakobegger]

As I see it, the problem with the app is not only that kids lose points for bathroom breaks. That's just the most outragous part, but it distracts from the core of the problem.

The problem is how this app is designed to enforce absolute discipline and completely disregards the students need for privacy.

Can you imagine how terrible it would be if you had a bad day, were a bit distracted in school, got yelled at by the teacher, only to have your mom text you to tell you off for not behaving in school?

The app would be just as bad without the bathroom break part.

As developers / product designers we can't always hide behind our users, by claiming that we can't influence how they use our products. Some products simply encourage bad behaviour, and we should take at least some responsibility for what people do with them.

[Consultant32452]

This still isn't the app. A teacher could just as easily email the parent for the same having a bad day thing you're talking about. My daughter's school has a similar app. I can basically see her attendance record and what her grades are. How I react to that data is on me.

There's multiple levels of abstraction on the bathroom tracking issue. The fact that children pretty universally abuse bathroom breaks to skip class, and parents/teachers/administrators sometimes try to deal with such problems in a stupid way is only one level. The other level of abstraction, as Michael Malice puts it... "Public schools are literal prisons for children and for most people is the only time in their life they'll experience violence first hand." That might be beyond the scope of this discussion, but it's part of the culture of school that leads to kids skipping school and escalating punitive consequences.

[benj111]

You could say that about anything. The problems with Facebook isn't Facebook because there are other social media websites. Guns aren't a problem because people stab each other with knives.

It's encouraging and normalising a behaviour where it shouldn't, that's the problem.

[Consultant32452]

>It's encouraging and normalising a behaviour where it shouldn't, that's the problem.

I think you're extrapolating too much from a data point of one. One teacher reportedly is a busybody and reports dumb shit to parents like whether or not kids go to the bathroom.

[benj111]

Would she have done that without the app though? Pre app did she send out daily itemised emails to all the parents?

I'm not even criticising the toilet break thing per se, just the entire concept of breaking down a kids day into little +1s and -1s. As a parent I want to know if he learnt anything, whether he enjoyed himself, that he was well behaved. A score of X doesn't help with any of those.

[Consultant32452]

Sending out daily itemized emails to parents was previously limited to students who frequently caused disruptions.

However, I remember teachers gamifying classroom behavior when I was a kid with points systems and rewards. Context and content matters a lot. A first grader is going to love it if their parents mention how great they did at school because they were a team player or helped a friend. A middle/high schooler will be mortified to get the same report. I would ask the teacher to stuff it if she was recording my daughter's bathroom breaks, but what if my kid was having some kind of problem where they were cutting class by taking excessive bathroom breaks? Then I'd start wanting some records.

[benj111]

"if my kid was having some kind of problem where they were cutting class by taking excessive bathroom breaks?"

This app presumably just leaves the ball in the parents court? If there were a problem I'd expect the teacher to be proactively dealing with it, and/or discussing it with me.

"Context and content matters a lot"

Agreed, half the problem is that this loses context.

toilet break -1

Where's the context there? Is that a problem? Normal?

I don't have a problem with gold stars and stuff, this is just depersonalising and not helpful.

[droithomme]

> A score of X doesn't help with any of those.

The only advantage is that it provide subpoena-able data empirically proving that most teachers have it in for certain classes of students, whether they are aware of it or not. The data is ripe for both academic study and class discrimination lawsuits and the sooner the better.