If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?

One thing not mentioned was that the monitors are used only with parental permission. At least that was true in the pilot. Many of these parents admit they can't enforce the truancy laws themselves.

"If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?"

Spoken like a true supporter of Big Brother. Hey, let's just make it legal for the government to tap our phones, search our cars, barge into our houses, and monitor our internet any time they want to, without bothering with those silly search warrants. After all, if you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?

Let's see, our options for handling habitual truants are:
1. Screw 'em! So what if they don't get an education because they are ditching school all of the time. We'll either be paying to incarcerate them or give them checks for welfare.
2. Incarcerate 'em! Throw their little asses in a youth prison. This way, they can start learning valuable skills in their future career as criminals.
3. Offer them the option of probation with GPS tracking. This way, they will be reminded that they are supposed to be going to school.

This is a way to keep kids from going to jail. I personally think it is great, as long as it is limited to volunteers who have a record of truancy.

Now, I got sidetracked from all the better-living-through-surveillance claptrap onto a different issue. The article says that Jaime Pacheco doesn’t eat breakfast at home, but when he gets to school and activates his tracking unit, he heads to the cafeteria. Does “in-school suspension” include some form of breakfast? Indeed, I think it does.

What gastronomical delights await the kiddies at Bryan Adams High School in East Dallas?

* Shudder *

After some meandering around the high school’s website, I found this menu:
http://www.dallasisd.org/inside_disd/depts/business/auxiliary/food_svc/hsmenu.pdf

What you’ve got there is a recipe for diabetes and ADHD. Highly refined white flour, sugar, cast off slag from unthinkable, industrial meat production operations and salt. We almost certainly don’t want to know what else.

I called my wife Becky over to look at it and we were both struck dumb by the sight of a main breakfast entrée called a “Breakfast Stick.”

WTF is a breakfast stick?

I played with the handy feeding time configurator http://www.nutri-cafe.com/ChooseSchool.aspx?State=TX&DistrictID=12/
and the breakfast stick looks like some form of corn dog. But what’s in that thing?

Anyway, gazing upon the U.S. now just seems like looking at Hell as a fractal. You zoom in, and there’s more Hell. Zoom in again, more Hell. Zoom in again, GPS tracked students. Zoom in again, breakfast stick.

Making sure your child goes to school is called "parenting". Why do so many people these days insist that the government do everything for them? Requesting the government to make your kid go to school is asinine.

And even if you managed to drag your little reject kicking and screaming into the classroom, what are the odds the child will even pay attention? You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

The world will always need someone behind the counter at 7-11.