Maybe Active Shooters Don’t Smile

 

Chinese Classroom

Chinese educators have installed facial recognition cameras at the front of the classroom. The cameras can recognize seven different facial expressions. According to the Chinese, these facial expressions will give educators some insight into the students level of involvement. Enforcing-facial-expression-compliance/. Appropriate facial expressions will be rewarded and inappropriate will be marked down.

It’s a good thing something like that can’t happen in the United States. Oops, too late, in Northern Lebanon School District students are required to smile while walking the hallways between classes,…

In a decidedly low tech approach teachers are required to monitor the facial expressions of students and report non-smilers to the office for intervention.

Fifteen-year-old Julianna Gundrum, a student at the school district, said if you didn’t smile there would be consequences. …

“If you don’t (smile) you get called to the office or down to see your guidance counselor,” she said. “You have to talk about your problems then. You have to or you get detention.”

Even though smiling in the hallways is not a written rule at the school district, it is something that Assistant High School Principal Benjamin Wenger has taken upon himself to enforce, according to several teachers. The teachers who spoke to Lebanon Daily News asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the school district.

Aside from the low tech approach, can you spot the other obvious difference between the Chinese Program and the North Lebanon, Pennsylvania program?

I am not sure that the Chinese program will increase learning, however, I’d be willing to bet it decreases the following classroom behaviors, sleeping, doodling, message writing and passing, cheating, outside reading and rude obnoxious behavior. A Chinese teacher might have an outside chance at teaching.

Maybe the Pennsylvania edict is not directed at learning . As the students goosestep down the hall, each smiling complacently, Assistant Principal Wenger and his henchmen can tell themselves that happy people don’t shoot up schools. What AP Wenger has instituted is actually an early warning system to identify disaffiliated students. Brilliant!