England’s leading the way for incorporating satellites to monitor the behavior of its little darlings as they board and depart school buses each day.  This pilot program allows school officials to issue cards, similar in size to a credit card, and will require elementary, middle school and high school aged kids to scan them, much like one would as he clocks in and out of work each day.  After they’ve scanned the cards, their parents can then log in on a website and monitor their behavior.  Those who are encouraging these new efforts insist it will ensure kids don’t cut class as often, reduce bullying and generally rein in other misbehaved little ones. 

Here’s the kicker, and the one point that seems to be most disturbing - there will be Bus Angels who will work undercover to report their classmates.  This is going to be a huge problem!  What happens when some of these kids who’ve suffered the consequences of their bad behavior target another who’s riding the same bus and who’s suspected of being one of these Bus Angels?  For that matter, it really makes no difference if the suspicions are correct.  Put a group of kids who clearly have behavioral problems (let’s be honest…these are drastic measures) in a moving vehicle and you can be sure they’re going to find someone to take their frustrations out on, especially if they know there’s someone else on the bus who’s been asked to play the role of snitch.  They can color it any shade of purple they want, and whether these kids are called bus angels or snitches, they’re going to be targeted.  Period.  It’s classic and although most of us can’t remember it being dangerous in any true sense, there’ve been tattletales in every school, in every neighborhood and in every classroom that houses kids under the age of 12 since the beginning of time.  This, though, can’t be good.  In fact, I’m wondering if many of these bus angels are feeling more like they’re in a hot ring of hell right about now.

This also opens up another round of questions: what happens if a parent’s online, monitoring the behavior of the kids and witnesses her sweet little girl knock the bus angel around a time or two?  Most of us don’t need to be reminded of our responsibility as parents, but again….for a group of kids to be so misbehaved that they require outer space, via satellites, to play the role of babysitter….something else is going on. 

I’m thinking this science project will end up with a ton of hardware that’s in a box and collecting dust in the bus maintenance shed by the time it’s all said and done.