As a parent who has two kids who have ClassDojo, I can say that ClassDojo supports points for any teacher defined criteria. I this case I believe it was a teacher-defined point system, not the default app settings.
So while it’s all good to discuss gamification and the dark side of these things, it’s not the apps designer that decided to negatively reinforce bathroom breaks, but their app did allow the teacher to set that up.
What other user defined settings and unintended dark patterns are out there?
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
"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.
The fact that this screenshot was posted by a stranger on Twitter is what removed the context. That's why the harsh reaction doesn't make any sense. We have no idea what has been going on in that classroom or with that particular kid. Hell, we don't even know if it's real.
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.
This isn't gamification; this is a violation of a child's privacy, and teaches kids that if they don't toe the line and follow whatever arbitrary rules someone in power has designed for them, they get in trouble. I'm genuinely appalled that this even exists. This is one step away from some kind of social credit system.
Sounds like school in the USA (as well as many other countries). Tech is just making that aspect more explicit.
Supposedly public schools in the states were created during the industrial revolution to train up obedient factory workers. Private schools before that were founded to train up a nobility steeped in hierarchy.
I agree, but I think his comment was sarcastic as that's an actual argument I have heard people make against homeschooling: "Bullying is no reason to homeschool. In public school your student will be bullied and learn how to deal with it. This is important life experience because it's how the real workplace is. Homeschooled students can not function in the workplace because they never learned how to handle the bullying." In other worlds the world is abusive, so there is a moral obligation to abuse our children so they learn to get used to it. Homeschooling parents are thus cast as abusing their children by not subjecting them to the constant abuse that describes the life long personal experiences of the anti-homeschooling advocate, who can't imagine any other world beyond daily abuse, belittling, nagging and worse, all seen as good for you as it makes you tough. Similar to the philosophy of the ancient Spartans who threw their babies off of cliffs and those who survived were strong enough to be Spartans.
I don’t understand what a hammer has to do with a story about an app that lets teachers score children by arbitrary teacher-specified criteria (without evaluation by an independent review board) and publish a feed to their parents of the scores with no oversight. Could you explain more?
Application is a tool, teacher is a user of given tool. Headline implies that tool is to penalize children, while in reality it is a decision of teacher. If that app would not exist, children were still penalized.
Tools deserve review and critique to determine whether they are good, neutral, and/or bad for society; and whether their use should be controlled or uncontrolled for societal good. For example, three such judgements as society sees them today from agricultural inventions:
Shovel: Neutral-Good (farming), Uncontrolled (it’s very unlikely you can do much harm to society with a shovel)
Backhoe: Neutral/Good (efficiency), Controlled (heavy machinery can easily kill people and damage infrastructure)
Agent Orange: Bad (imprecise, damaging, disease-inducing), Controlled (considered a chemical weapon with no legitimate societal use)
Why would you expect oversight for something like this? Would you also expect an independent review board to provide oversight for the teacher giving a student a note to bring home that says "your kid went to the bathroom during class"?
Part of the valuable purpose I see in schools is to provide children the experience of living a life apart from their parents, in a setting that offers them carefully-monitored self direction. HN has had several high-scoring front page posts about mistreatments of Amazon’s warehouse workers and contract delivery drivers, in which many suggest they are unable to take bathroom breaks. This is considered to be abusive behavior by many people, and labor laws exist specifically to prevent such abuses as they’ve occurred in the past. Censuring a child for needing to go to the bathroom — literally docking them a Meowmeowbeenz point! — is beyond acceptable. Writing a note saying “your kid seems to go to the bathroom excessively” is completely appropriate, but not what we’re discussing here.
So I think that more oversight should be used in order to prevent teachers with bad and abusive efficiency strategies from, for example, downvoting children for needing to pee.
If pen and paper had been invented in the past twenty years, I would absolutely shine a spotlight on this kind of unexpected outcome from its invention and use by teachers.
As others have mentioned, it’s parameterization all the way down. If the teacher was using JavaScript to do this, should we blame their web stack as being complicit and enabling?
What effects does logging every micro-level event with near-instant feedback loop between teacher, pupil and parent have towards accomplishing the goals of primary school?
If you think tracking bathroom use is a "dark pattern" of this technology, what non-dark uses does it enable or enhance that previous - less capable - tools don't?
We got spiral-bound daily planners for homework with a section at the bottom of each day for hall passes / late passes. When deciding to issue one, the teacher could check what you had already been issued that day, or even thumb through your history. Desire to track this stuff predates classroom tech.
Does ClassDojo provide supporting material with a didactic foundation on how to effectively use the app? Do schools or teacher associations provide such material? IMHO, without such guidance, it is irresponsible to use these apps.
My son hated ClassDojo. Everything was about points, and he saw through the charade enough to see that it didn't really matter, and it was way overused in his classroom.
I won't do it, but I was tempted to make a TeacherDojo spoof where students in a class could award their teacher points for teaching well, and take away points when their teacher fell into bad teaching habits.
This should absolutely exist. Reaction to the idea of students rating teachers is an extremely useful test for discovering a person's underlying attitudinal biases.
There's a difference between teaching math majors at a top-25 school and teaching "business calculus". In the first case the students and the instructor have congruent purposes, but in the second case you'll find students who are missing the prerequisites and who think that showing up is deserving of a passing grade.
I would argue "top-25 school" isn't a necessary qualifier here. What you're talking about is students with intrinsic motivation to study a certain topic, and that exists regardless of the caliber of the school. dvs, at even the "worst" state school, the math majors probably want to be in their classes; if they didn't they would have picked a major perceived to be easier.
At the college I was at, there were definitely teaches so afraid of bad student scores that they would pass any student who complained. (Some students at US colleges and universities, from my anecdotal experience, believe that they pay the tuition to receive a degree regardless of academic merit.)
Long enough ago when I was at university we ranked our professors at the end of the semester. I don’t recall anything coming of it or anyone being fired as a result of scoring badly, but it’s not a new concept.
I had one CS professor that was just awful as a teacher. She was, as far as I know, universally disliked by the entire class. We also did end of year teacher evaluations and I'm sure she got eviscerated, and I'm sure it wasn't a one time thing. She's still teaching the same class today so either she's a tremendous asset for the school overall or the evaluations are meaningless.
Surely all you do is turn around the ClassDojo scores, and make that a judgement on the teacher?
Why don't you start asking the school which teacher has the highest and lowest scores, and why X has the lowest score, and what plans there are to help that teacher improve. I'm sure you'll see less student getting marked down for going to the toilet then.
Teacher rating systems, even by adult students, inevitably collapse into "did I get awarded a high grade" plus "does the teacher agree with my prejudices".
I have to admit that I instantly recoil at any system that tracks what a child does and potentially penalizes them with such granularity. I suppose it's not that far removed from getting a gold star for behaving well...but pair that with technology, and an officious school board, and I can easily envision a kind of perverse social-credit system for students, following them for their entire scholastic careers.
I've made a personal pledge to never, ever give out numerical ratings for people or service any longer.
Because you know that if I give out a number from 1 to 10, that number is getting attached to he customer service rep I happened to be interacting with, and go into a bullshit statistical system that tells management which reps are "good" and which reps are "bad".
It's de-humanizing, lazy, and nothing good will come of it.
I have a similar personal pledge. When companies ask for numerical ratings, I do one of two things:
1. Put the highest number in every field.
2. Write up an official complaint.
IMO there's no morally justifiable middle ground; non-perfect ratings are a de-facto punishment. If someone's behavior was so reprehensible to warrant that, you should be airing some kind of grievance and going through an official process.
I have a similar policy for the rare occasions that I use a ride-share service; so far, I've always given 5 stars to every driver, because I've yet to have an experience so bad that I think that preventing other people from having it is worth hurting the livelihood of the driver. Sure, sometimes I might have a really good conversation with one driver or a boring one with another when I'd rather just listen to my headphones, but I've never had any significant issues (though granted, I don't ride often). If I ever had a serious issue, I doubt that I'd be satisfied with just filing a review into the void, so I kind of doubt I'll ever give anyone fewer than five stars and not take some additional action to report the issue.
I have generally the same policy, but i have given perhaps 1% 3 or 4-star ratings on Uber/Lyft.
Why? Unnecessarily aggressive driving. Not road rage and not unsafe per-se but 10 lane changes in 3 miles, none of them smooth or signalled. Dramatically excessive perfume in the car. Neither is a safety issue; neither is worth a formal complaint to the platform; both are annoying.
For CS reps and the like, many (most?) companies using 1-10 scales treat 9 and 10 the same (promoter), 7 and 8 the same (passive), and 1-6 the same (detractor). See also “net promoter score”
Even gold stars, aren’t they outdated? In France we used to have “Remise des prix” until the 1980’s (It was prizes for the best in class in each category... well everyone had a prize, the worst student generally had “the prize of friendship”. See “Le Petit Nicolas” for fun descriptions of that times).
But we stopped giving prizes because they generally made the children jealous, competitive or lack confidence. Our current civilization has changed, now we emphasize more on collaboration than individual performance, at least in public statements. For example we prefer to give a collective performance at the end of the year than rewarding for behavior.
Gold stars are purely about positive reinforcement, you don't get a black star for doing X.
I seem to have less problem than others here about schools getting dictatorial etc, but to me the school is at least partially responsible for bringing up a functioning human being, so they do need to say what is acceptable or not. Obviously they need to do that in an acceptable way, gold stars seem like a good way. An app for recording every single detail good and bad, not so much.
On the other hand, my housemate (a high school teacher in Australia) has an awful time keeping his kids behaving, partly because they know that as long as they stay under the threshold for detention / suspension there are almost no negative consequences to being a dickhead.
In addition to the qualms about whether this sort of point system represents a movement toward a "social-credit" system, I have another question:
What the hell does this have to do with education?
I have no problem with gamefication or apps like ClassDojo, but I have to say: the teacher opting to track bathroom breaks (and even apply a penalty by dint of them) comes as no surprise to me given the bizarre norms of educational institutions. It is in the shadow of these bizarre norms that we need to consider the appropriateness of scoring systems and interfaces.
I have never understood what things like hall passes, the pledge of allegiance, and double-file-by-sex lines at doors and cafeterias have to do with learning and nurturing.
They seem unambiguously oppositional.
A 5th grader (typically a 10 or 11-year old) is absolutely old enough to understand when they need to use the bathroom, walk there by themselves, and return to their classroom, picking up context clues from a capable teacher to plug back into the material without feeling (or being) left out.
Heck, many 4 year olds are capable of this.
What is the point of education if the culture of its institutions is insistent on treating students as though they are incapable of coherent thought in the first place?
> The teacher opting to track bathroom breaks (and even apply a penalty by dint of them) comes as no surprise to me given the bizarre norms of educational institutions.
I've never taught a formal class in a school, but I've worked with this age group in similar contexts. I could potentially see myself making a policy wherein, whenever a student asks to use the bathroom during class, I say: "Go ahead, but next time, please go before class starts." I would never institute any actual consequences (although, I'd follow up if I noticed something truly excessive), but I'd keep repeating the line so they remember.
Some 11-year-olds absolutely need to be reminded to use the bathroom ahead of time. Just because they're capable of not soiling themselves doesn't mean they'll actually plan ahead to avoid going at inopportune times.
The fact that this is all being quantified in an app is a separate issue. I find that problematic on a number of levels...
> A 5th grader (typically a 10 or 11-year old) is absolutely old enough to understand when they need to use the bathroom
I see these types of arguments a lot. You're focusing on the good students and the fact that this type of thing isn't needed for them. Rather, consider that this rule is made to curb the behavior of the bad students; the ones that are taking bathroom breaks during class every day because they don't feel like being in class.
If that is the reason for the rule, then the your argument (which only applies to the children that are trying to do the right thing in the first place) doesn't have any weight.
> he bad students; the ones that are taking bathroom breaks during class every day because they don't feel like being in class.
This is an abhorrent and inappropriate judgment.
I have dealt with a lot of the people you are describing and, in many cases, found the smart, motivated, wonderful, curious, kickass students inside them.
Many, many people do not want, at 10 or 11 years of age, sit through a class full of stupid, boring, authoritarian bullshit when they can be doing something (that they perceive to be) useful, like playing minecraft or soccer or learning how to play the drums.
There is nothing "bad" about this. The "bad" is the way these people are treated.
And to be clear: by your judgment, I was a bad student. Many of us here on HN were or are, I'm sure, bad students.
My success is due in no small part to people in my life who stood up to the people casting the exact judgment you are casting here.
> I see these types of arguments a lot.
If that's true, I don't understand why you haven't learned to respond to them in an appropriate, adult manner. I realize that my tone sounds combative, but I am taking this tone because I want anyone reading this thread who might feel judged by your words to know that this is not a reasonable way to approach this subject and is not welcome in actual serious discussions of education reform.
Certain things are expected of students, and some children are not willing or able to do those things. That makes them a bad student; the same way that someone that won't run would make a bad soccer player. It doesn't make them a bad person. It doesn't mean they can't become a good student by changing their behavior. But they _are_ a bad student.
You can argue that what is expected of a student should change, and you appear to be doing that in a roundabout way (by calling the current curriculum "stupid, boring, authoritarian bullshit "). But that doesn't change the fact that individuals who will/can not participate as expected with the current expectations are, by definition, bad students.
The authoritarian and arbitrary part of the public education system is partially about conditioning children to respect authority. It's a byproduct of the industrial revolution needing a supply of subservient workers.
Sure, that's one of many excuses given for their existence.
But the underlying point, obviously, is: why are students not interested in paying attention? What is wrong with these classes? We're talking about an age group whose attention is easily kept by things that are fun, exciting, interesting, engaging.
If classes aren't that, then hall passes don't help.
It takes a non-trivial amount of effort to make classes that are engaging to students, especially if you're trying to cater to all of them. It's a lot easier to just slap a band-aid over it and try to prevent "distractions" (which, in my experience, doesn't really help: kids are exceptionally brilliant at finding ways to fidget or play with the most ordinary of things when they're not interested).
I was saying this 20 years ago,when I was at school,and I'd say it today again:screw them.If someone isn't interested in education,transfer them to some sort of special needs class,where he/she would match the rest,as there's absolutely no point of dragging the entire class because of a few rotten apples. Of course, social services should work closely with school in case there are issues in the family that may be causing it.Same applies at work,where you get 20 people on the same salary,yet a couple require 20 times more attention because of x,y,z...
As I've mentioned below, I'm not talking about students who aren't "interested in education", I'm talking about classes that are fundamentally dull to the point that students find it reasonable to find distractions rather than focus on what's being taught.
Edit: I am re-thinking the liability associated with what I originally wrote here. Sorry to harm the discussion with this edit but I need to be careful.
It ended up being an out-of-court settlement. The parties were _very_ litigious. I was only involved as a contractor on public records requests. I want to be insanely careful about giving much in the way of details. I know that doesn't do much to bolster what I wrote, but I also need to be careful about exposing myself or a Customer to any liability. You can find the kind of cases I'm talking about by searching for "FAPE" (free appropriate public education) and "ADHD", "disability", and such.
For parents not to interfere. School teaches children to be less dependent on parents, to interact with a system. Interfering parent can make it impossible for a child to learn these important skills.
Parents protecting their child is a good thing, but only to a point. A child needs to learn how to live without protection from parents. How to interact with a boss (a teacher plays similar role in a school), how to do what a boss have asked, how to ask a boss for a favor, how to learn rules of a new boss and to adapt to them?
How a person supposedly could learn all of it, if every time when happened something that is not convenient for a child, parents would interfere, come to talk with a teacher, and insist on changing her rules on behalf of their child?
Acting independently is different to being unmonitored. Parents should monitor their children, not doing that is called abandonment or dereliction. You can monitor a child and have them act independently, there's no dependency between these things.
Yes, the level of monitoring is a tricky issue.
If I had reports of "toilet in class time", and it suddenly increased one month, then I could investigate why - bullying, UTI, boredom? Which helps me to care for my child.
Now, the likelihood is that I'll notice these things earlier than that, but as children grow they usually become experts at hiding things, like being bullied. As parents aren't in school, and teachers can't see everything, and it's not always possible to have a chat with the teacher, then some monitoring can be useful to aid parenting.
For example, we get an absence record each month, that's useful monitoring that infringes on a child's independence. But it's also vital data for safety, and to ensure a child is getting educated. If my older kid missed an afternoon without my permission, that's no biggy (we all have bad days), but if they miss time often then there are problems; if a younger kid is out of school by themselves that might be a serious safety issue.
Keeping parents (or whoever) from interfering by keeping them uninformed sounds like a dirty hack rather than a good design. Whoever should not interfere but does not know they should not should better be taught just this.
Parents are uninformed just because there is a price of getting information which they do not want to pay. Parents needs to ask their kid about her day and to talk with a teacher sometimes. Parents could know everything, but they need to make an actual effort for that and to keep making efforts.
This efforts is a good thing against parental anxiety. When parents did something they might feel that they fulfilled their role of parents and stop there. When they got information for free, they didn't do anything yet as a parents, they may feel obliged to do something. There is a good chance that they would be unable to find a constructive thing they could do, so they might do a random thing.
I'm speaking from personal experience, but I'm guessing that most parents would talk to their child or impose consequences if they were told that they were misbehaving at school. Lowering the barrier for when this is reported to where it's covering issues that are minor and should be handled in the classroom does not sound like it would help.
> most parents would talk to their child or impose consequences if they were told that they were misbehaving at school
This means these parent should be educated about the proper way to educate children. They should be taught to choose wisely when to impose consequences and what kind of consequences that should be.
E.g. don't yell at them or talk to them the way like if a catastrophe has happened every time a minor imperfection in their behavior occurs. Also don't assume they are idiots which can never understand they've done something wrong (and should generally avoid) without you telling them.
I'd go as far as to say that you should not yell at a child ever. I don't see any possible scenario where punishing a child like that would lead to something productive.
A relative of mine is socially awkward and was often bullied. He became a teacher recently and was bragging to me that he doesn't allow his elementary school students bathroom breaks. Parents get upset but he doesn't care. After years of being bullied through school now he's finally in power in a school situation and is determined to use it. I'm now wondering how common this situation is.
If we don't want a social credit system for ourselves, why would we implement one for our children? Here's why this terrifies me:
I was a sensitive kid getting bullied at one point and had a horrid 2nd grade teacher. Reflecting on her behavior as an adult, it was apparent that I was just a problem for her in her last year before retirement (there was a "Miss So-and-so is retiring" party we had to have as a class for her at the end of the year).
The bullying was bad enough that she would just remove me from the class and have me work alone in the library because I'm certain that it was easier than the alternative. This happened probably 30+ times until one day I broke down and started to cry because it was just a rough day, and I just felt very alone.
Librarians noticed, teacher notified, yelled at by the teacher privately for "being a disturbance", I then told my parents, Dad got insanely angry at the situation (rightfully so), and we met with the principal. I remember sitting outside of the office listening to my father destroy the guy verbally. I cried then too.
After the fact I didn't have to go to the library alone anymore, but she literally wouldn't respond verbally to me at times. I remember not being called on when I had the answer, being the only kid with a hand up. She just ignored me unless she absolutely HAD to respond (IMO abusive behavior towards a child). My grades went down and I was pulled from the gifted programs never to get back in. All of this happened within one school year.
I am horrified of what a teacher like that would have done to me with this tool.
One of my only memories from kindergarten was of the social control system the teacher had. There were three faces, a smiling green, straight faced yellow, and frowning red, arranged like a stoplight. Every child had a clothespin with their name on it. Behaving well? The pin with your name clasped the green light, etc.
One day my teacher was trying to punish a troublesome student, who I only recall because of this incident. She meant to move his pin to red, but accidentally grabbed mine and moved it instead. I, instantly, burst into tears because I had nothing wrong, and still recollect my feelings of outrage decades later.
I can only imagine trying to work through social credit bureaucracy as a child to correct mistakes, or understand outcomes.
Wow reading this just brought a kindergarten memory for me.
We had laminated apples on the wall, and if we were bad we got a worm sticker stuck on it for a week, we called it getting a "wormy apple".
One day I was listening to an audio book with headphones and didn't hear the teacher call us back, so all at once she snatched the headphones off me, asked me why I don't listen, and gave me a wormy apple. I remember it to this day, I felt so wronged because I was doing an "approved activity" and felt I was punished for it. Seeing the worm on my apple made me cry and I never listened to audio books in that classroom again.
So I don't know if making that sort of stuff electronic will be better or worse but I know I didn't like systems like that at all.
I wonder how many people have unkind memories of their kindergarten teacher?
Mine had us color a bunny rabbit. I grabbed a crayon (purple) and colored it. I think I had seen a rabbit on Sesame Street of that color, and the 8 crayon pack doesn't allow for subtlety. She grabbed it from me, threw it in the garbage, and told me to color another one because that isn't a "proper color" for a rabbit. I slid the paper back and said something to the effect it's already colored because bunnies are white. Spent the rest of the hour sitting in a chair in the corner staring at the wall. Dad was "concerned" when he picked me up, and laughing in the truck. I was just very angry.
I can only imagine what a points system would have done to me in school. I'd of probably been done in 1st grade because of that stupid volcano.
> Reflecting on her behavior as an adult, it was apparent that I was just a problem for her
Really, that's the issue with school in a nut-shell. Just like I want to walk into work Monday morning and have a routine day, so do teachers and administrators.
This technological issue just appears to be another symptom of a sick system, one that favors ease of life for administrators and teachers, that and hitting test metrics than for a good, quality education for children.
We've seen it before, zero-tolerance. Church it up, "it's about holding everyone to the same standard," avoiding bias, etc. Well, it's bullshit. The reality is everyone teacher and administrator exercises some degree of prosecutorial discretion, completely invalidating any claim of their lack of tolerance, but on that occasion they throw the book at you they just say "Zero-Tolerance" and that's that.
We build and buy systems that favor ease of use, but not good outcomes and there is simply no accountability for good outcome.
This is a teacher defined penalty, not a ClassDojo defined penalty.
ClassDojo's main use case is to reward behavior that's usually difficult to reward, like "Sally played well with others today!" It encourages the small things.
This is an interesting use case of the platform by the teacher, and I suspect the outcome will simply be the teacher won't use this penalty anymore.
What is the benefit of ClassDojo? Instead of simply making notes about students in a notebook, teachers use ClassDojo so that... what? Parents and students can be notified in real time of how many POINTS they got? How is that at all beneficial, let alone beneficial enough to justify inserting a private, for-profit company between students and teachers.
The benefit for me is I get to see pictures from my son's class, of him doing stuff in class, which as a parent, I greatly appreciate the teacher taking the time to take and post pics of what they're doing in class. They also send messages regarding homework, upcoming quizzes, what they're doing for the week, upcoming field trips -- and I can contact my son's teacher at moment's notice without going through the school. What's the benefit of that? There was a potential shooter situation last year and all classes were locked down, and teachers could post to classdojo that they were ok.
I've never even seen this points system used. Its a communication tool between teachers and parents. My kids are 2nd and 1st graders, so maybe it changes as kids get older?
My biggest complaint - there is a lack of standardization by schools on what app the teachers use. In the past year, I've had to install/set-up Class Dojo, Bloomz, ClassTag - which all pretty much do the same thing, and now all have info and pics of my kids. I never even heard of the apps until the teachers said they were using it.
Just wondering: at the start of the school year, did anyone ever offer you an opportunity to opt out of having your child's photographs and behavioral record shared and stored with Class Dojo and the others?
> The benefit for me is I get to see pictures from my son's class, of him doing stuff in class, which as a parent, I greatly appreciate the teacher taking the time to take and post pics of what they're doing in class. They also send messages regarding homework, upcoming quizzes, what they're doing for the week, upcoming field trips -- and I can contact my son's teacher at moment's notice without going through the school.
Email isn’t reasonable for a class of 25 children. I get updates every day from my kids teachers in apps like this - they would never be able to figure out email.
Damn, I'm probably reading too much into this and I admittedly don't have kids but that sounds a bit Orwellian. If I were a kid now that much surveillance probably wouldn't bother me, at least at that age, considering that it would be the only way I know but looking back at my school years I'm glad that wasn't a thing.
No it doesn't. These are arbitrary points assigned by teachers. What are you going to do with that information? Remember your teachers and how good they were at their job?
You are subjecting your children to constant surveillance and constant scrutiny, for what? Improvement on what? Let them be children, for crying out loud. Don't intervene all the time.
The 'benefit' is that it makes teachers jobs easier. If kids actively want to win points they'll conform to any behaviours defined to get them more points. There is no benefit to the kids or the parents.
If it's aimed at kids behaving well in order to earn points (strive for a positive) rather than doing it in order to avoid punishment, than it sounds like a good idea to me. Everything I'd seen indicates that positive reinforcement works much better than negative.
Quivering in fear of punishment, and thus being motivated by avoidance of punishment, is the very definition of negative reinforcement. Fear of punishment is not positive reinforcement as you are claiming in your comment. Motivation by fear of punishment is negative reinforcement. That's how negative reinforcement works.
I can see how a tool like this could potentially be useful to teachers working with larger classes, or multiple groups of students, to help them keep a reliable record of which students are participating (or misbehaving) in class. Trying to keep track entirely in one's head can be difficult, especially if there are a lot of students, and it's easy for bias to slip in through selective remembering/forgetting of incidents.
Sharing this information with parents, however, seems inappropriate, as does placing a negative value on normal events like using the restroom.
my kids teachers has always used solely as a digital communications tool. the points system is secondary and you don’t have to even use it to use the app.
I assume the idea isn't "don't go to the bathroom" so much as "please use the bathroom before class starts." That isn't such an unreasonable ask if classes are relatively short.
Adding that to a computerized point system is what makes it seem creepy...
I remembered teachers constantly acting like we had 20 minutes between classes, so we had no excuse if we didn't have the time to do everything from taking a shit to printing resources out at the library between classes. Of course, they also wouldn't let us out of class in time ("I dismiss you, not the bell!" power trip). In reality, the time between classes was used up just commuting between classes and changing your textbook from the locker.
I also remember so much downtime during class that I would regularly sleep in school. So the idea that bathroom breaks need to be some scarce resource is ridiculous. Not to mention any time you need that privacy whether it's GI issues or adjusting your colostomy bag or whatever.
Not all people's bodies work the same all the time, and not all 5th graders have perfect decision making. Urgent bathroom needs are an event that everyone will have in their life. Negative reinforcement for isolated instances of this is abusive.
Bathroom usage is of zero concern to an instructor unless it becomes an abnormal pattern. And if it is, the interest should be out of a concern for health, unless demonstrated otherwise, not a concern for discipline.
5th grade classes typically have hours without interruption. I'm pretty sure I pee once before lunch too if I don't have a terrifying and dystopian social credit system docking me for the priviledge of emptying my bladder.
I'm sure every school is different, but I've observed 5th grade classes (I was planning to become a teacher at one point), and they never went longer than an hour, at least not without a quick stretch break or something.
The break is only if it's an abnormally long class.
If there's six classes + lunch + recess, none of those classes should be longer than an hour. Remember, school is usually seven hours or less, and you need some time between each class for the kids to get from point A to point B.
Not sure where you're from, but here in western America most 5th grade activities aren't split between classrooms. They have one or two primary teachers and one primary workspace for the whole day.
That class based split appears in middle school, which is Grade 7 onwards.
I've seen 5th grades in the US where the kids are walked between classrooms for different classes, specifically in order to "prepare them for middle school." In other cases, I've still observed some sort of break.
You can certainly construct a scenario where this bathroom policy makes zero sense, but you can also construct one where it's a bit more logical. I feel like we're missing a lot of context here, and absent information to the contrary, I'd rather assume the best than jump to outrage.
Why should we? Schools are universally reviled in the US because of what they have become. Mindless drudgery and ineffective teaching techniques mixed with a sullen workforce prepping the next generation of sullen workforce.
Wealthy individuals counteract this with extensive (and expensive!) private tutoring.
Most American schools are like that only from middle school. Elementary schools have teachers traveling between classes instead, if they bother changing the teacher at all. Breaks are simply recess and lunch periods.
When I was in fifth grade, we had lunch break, and a mid morning break. Other than that, we were in the same room all day. "Don't go to the bathroom" when you have a ten-ish year old bladder under those circumstances is a completely unreasonable request.
Where I grew up, elementary school was done in one classroom and taught by one teacher. There were no breaks between classes because we didn't have separate classes. I'm not convinced this is the best system, but I am convinced ~2 hours is too long to go without a bathroom break.
I feel like we're missing a lot of context here. How much time does this school have between classes? How long are their classes? And, are there any actual consequences for losing points?
My daughter is in middle school. She is not allowed to use the restroom within the window of 10 minutes after class starts or 10 minutes after it begins. Also, the time between classes is like 3-4 minutes, which is not enough time to take a restroom break and get to class.
For the same reason you wouldn't expect young children to lift heavy weights. Adults have much stronger muscles than children, including bladder muscles.
ClassDojo and related dystopian apps are really terrible for morale and have an antieducational result. If your kid's school wasn't enough of a prison camp indoctrinating them with propaganda wait until you see the results after the Dojo marketers get all the teachers mesmerized and on board with tracking every tiny thing and sending alerts constantly to parents about the most minor and always irrelevant issue. Obsession with microdata that has nothing to do with the actual academics or intellectual understanding of concepts allows teachers to ignore academics and turn everything into a operant conditioning experiment. Alert dings replace bells.
If your school district mandates Dojo, move districts or homeschool. If it's optional, meet with them and make sure they understand they are not under any circumstances to use it on your child and you deny consent. It is abusive software and its use should be banned by law if we want to have good schools and an educated populace in decent mental health. Constant nagging over minor issues destroys psychological well being. Imagine living with a partner who used such an app, or working for a boss. Anyone would agree that would be an abusive situation. Now why would you subject your children to such a thing.
Just a few comments down, one teacher says she uses the app and doesn't penalize for bathroom breaks. It sounds like blame lies with the teach and not the app necessarily.
Better title:
"Teacher penalizes sutudent for bathroom break using "ClassDojo" App."
Weird, so we're teaching our kids how to live in a Social Credit system now? Why do we create totalitarian horror shows for our kids that we would never want to live under ourselves? The only consolation is that this generation is probably going to value their privacy after the spyware they have to live with in school.
My son’s school uses this. He came home from his first day of class, started carrying around a book like a clipboard and taking away points from my wife and I whenever we moved or spoke. So there you go, gamification through the eyes of an innocent child. Considering the percentage of my family that was wiped out fighting Hitler, this Nazi stuff really bugs me. It starts with gamification, turns into social credit, work camps are next.
Seriously? Duh. If you don't teach your kids that they need to plan ahead and take responsibility for themselves, they never will. And if you haven't taught your kids, your teacher is gonna have to - especially if it means a disruption to every other student in class.
So while it’s all good to discuss gamification and the dark side of these things, it’s not the apps designer that decided to negatively reinforce bathroom breaks, but their app did allow the teacher to set that up.
What other user defined settings and unintended dark patterns are out there?