Parents, there’s no going back to basics as academic achievement is no longer the primary purpose of schooling. The new 21st Century Skills are but a click away for the knowing; self-regulation, optimism, resilience, curiosity, imagination and adaptability to name a few. Assessing these character traits in children is the motivating factor in developing surveillance devices to literally monitor emotions. A “Grit Tenacity & Perseverance” report, released by the US Department of Education, was written by a Defining Deeper Learning committee, seeking to probe deeper into your child’s mind.

Social Sciences inclusive of psychological profiling began in the eugenics movement, notably with Sir Francis Galton. Identifying persons using fingerprints and modeling intelligence using the bell curve are familiar devises credited to him. Eugenics’ darker side, utilized science to justify creating a society, free from individuals who didn’t measure up to a utopian standard of a desirable citizen.

“The aim of eugenics is to bring as many influences as can be reasonable employed, to cause the useful classes in the community to contribute more than their proportion to the next generation.”¹

Our 21st Century generation of students can anxiously look forward to having one or more influences strapped to their computer or their bodies to read their mental health faculties. Your child’s behavioral task performance is captured while sitting at the computer, using 4 parallel streams of affecting computing. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s recent innovations for tapping into the emotions of children are pictured on page 44. A facial camera, a posture analysis seat, pressure mouse and a wireless Skin Conductance Senor are the newest in surveillance devices.

“Sensors provide constant, parallel streams of data and are used with data mining technologies and self-report measures to examine frustration, motivation, confidence, boredom and fatigue”(p.44)http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/files/2013/02/OET-Draft…

Facial electromyography measures the facial muscles, like the frowning muscle, to determine if the student has a negative unpleasant response. Some researchers probe eyebrow movements to determine negative and positive responses. The posture analysis seat can monitor up to 9 sitting positions, however, it states that pressure distribution changes occur, but be assured, it will count how many times a student leaves their seat. A pressure mouse measures a subjects ’emotional valence’, either positive or negative. A longitudinal study will provide information to build a predictive model of emotion theory. A 3M lab used the mouse, along with subjects’ heart rates and skin conductance while the subjects viewed emotionally evocative stimuli.

Wireless skin conductance sensors measure galvanic skin responses or conductivity, depending on how moist the skin is. Two small silver chloride electrodes conduct a small voltage of electricity across the skin, either strapped on the wrist or ankle. Sweat glands are controlled by the nervous system, so the greater the arousal produced the greater the conductivity.

If you haven’t noticed your child’s frustration at school, Learning Companion will. The 4 parallel sensors help students to overcome frustration, using an agent that “mimics” the users response. http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2004/03/computers-with-attitude-2/

Surveillance science in the classroom is called ‘affective computing’ and justifies itself purposing a personalized curriculum for students or readjusting their skill level when needed. Psychometrics and the devices to measure emotional changes in children are selecting the bright star citizens, having the correct emotional valence and the correct attitude for lifelong learning in a global society. Gaming vendors could learn what peaks the excitability response and behavioral psychologist can finish the work begun by Galton. These devices are used by scientific researchers related to psychological assessment. Behavioral scientists stress less on ‘knowledge getting’ and more on the affective domain of learning, also termed as non-cognitive skills. They also favor using triangles to model their theories.

A Voicethread triangle, representative of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, defines a set of affective behaviors while working in cooperative groups. The ‘organizing level’ doesnt quite fit into a parents definition. “Accepts different viewpoints & builds upon them to develop new perspectives and understanding of ideas”. Affective behaviors are also measured observable behaviors in the classroom and all observations are destined for the database. http://www.teachingwithoutwalls.com/2012/08/the-other-learning-domain-developing.htm

This matches 21st Century skills: agility, adaptability, how changeable your child is. Grit, Tenacity and Perseverance measures the child’s “URGE” to learn, as stated in A Nation at Risk report, in 1983. “Our recommendations are based on the beliefs that everyone can learn, that everyone is born with an urge to learn which can be nurtured, that a solid high school education is within the reach of virtually all, and that lifelong learning will equip people with the skills required for new careers and for citizenship.” Restructuring schooling has placed children at risk. If as the Nation at Risk report says, “when international comparisons were last made a decade ago, the top 9 percent of American students compared favorably in achievement with their peers in other countries . . . and many large urban areas in recent years report that average student achievement in elementary schools is improving”, why has the trend not turned to past experience? Rather than measuring academic achievement, the proverbial they, want to assess attitudes, values and beliefs.

Perseverance to learn in a virtual world is a basic skill today. Justification for affective data mining has no validity in determining the predictive success in a child’s future career, unless one’s future opportunities are predicated on the totality of the longitudinal data collected. (see article – Induction into the Service of Society) Interfacing sensors to students, obliges them to willingly engage in what Michael Foucault coined as ‘self-surveillance’. Surveillance by unknown observers, fashions “a disciplined society” of self-controlling rational individuals. He uses Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon (all-seeing) as a metaphor, a prison with a centrally located darkened observation tower to view prisoners. The inmates in the lighted cells would obligingly be on good behavior. The students would obligingly self-actualize. “Expressing one’s creativity, quest for spiritual enlightenment, pursuit of knowledge, and the desire to give to society are examples of self-actualization”²

Well, I wouldn’t be too anxious. While technology my not kill your children, it will keep a close eye on them.


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1 – THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY Volume X; July, 1904; Number 1: Read before the Sociological Society at a meeting in the School of Economies (London University), on May 16, 1904. Professor Karl Pearson, F.R.S., in the chair. http://galton.org/
Francis Galton founder of differential psychology, inventor of fingerprint identification, pioneer of statistical correlation and regression, convinced hereditarian, eugenicist, proto-geneticist, half-cousin of Charles Darwin and best-selling author.

2 – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization Goldstein, quoted in Arnold H. Modell, The Private Self (Harvard 1993) p. 44