
Student rating app penalizes fifth-graders who need bathroom breaks - fortran77
https://twitter.com/JoshSeim/status/1177402278895992834
======
kevinconroy
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?

~~~
kelnos
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.

~~~
Simon_says
> if they don't toe the line and follow whatever arbitrary rules someone in
> power has designed for them, they get in trouble

Sounds like good practice.

~~~
mantap
Sure if you want your kid to grow up into a dumb grunt.

~~~
droithomme
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.

------
japhyr
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.

~~~
koolba
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.

~~~
djsumdog
I forgot about those surveys we filled out. The professor left the room and a
student had to volunteer to take it to the department sectary.

I was in school around the time RateMyProfessor came out as well. I'm
surprised to hear it's still being used as well.

------
lordleft
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.

~~~
henrikschroder
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.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
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.

~~~
saghm
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.

~~~
sokoloff
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”

------
dictum
It's curious that "restroom during class" is the only concrete, non-arbitrary
event in that log.

"Not following instructions", "off task", "teamwork" and "great day" could
mean many different things, in different contexts.

"Teamwork" could mean playing nicely along with a colleague who is bullying
others out of teacher's view.

"Not following instructions" is whatever an authority wants to be.

"Off task" could mean that you're not succesfully juggling forcing yourself
not to get a bathroom break while concentrating on a task.

(I may not sound like it, but I appreciate teachers and I wish they didn't
need an app to justify their actions to hovering parents.)

------
jMyles
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?

~~~
saagarjha
I think the point of bathroom passes is to prevent disruptions from students
who aren’t interested in paying attention in class.

~~~
jMyles
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.

~~~
alexis_fr
Many things are wrong about the current school system, but the best is just to
let a 14 years old girl talk about it:
[https://www.bitchute.com/video/oiZWLadcxYEu/](https://www.bitchute.com/video/oiZWLadcxYEu/)

~~~
htfu
Wait is this why the alt-right hates Greta Thunberg so much, they already had
their own bizarro version?

------
saagarjha
> Her teachers add and subtract behavioral points in an app shared with her
> mom.

Honestly, this is _way_ too much information. Why does a parent need to know
the details of every minor issue in class?

~~~
qwerty456127
Why not? If the parents over-react it's a problem with the parent that should
be addressed.

I'd agree if it was about student's private life but as long as it's about
classes - why should anything be hidden?

~~~
ordu
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?

~~~
qwerty456127
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.

~~~
ordu
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.

------
ngngngng
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.

~~~
rs23296008n1
So he's now a bully. And the cycle repeats.

~~~
codr7
That is how bullies are made, through emotional trauma.

The cycle repeats as long as it has to for us to see it, accept responsibility
and build a better society where it doesn't need to happen.

------
folkhack
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.

~~~
ALittleLight
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.

~~~
en-us
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.

~~~
protomyth
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.

------
stevebmark
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.

~~~
protomyth
Perhaps the ClassDojo developers should remove the points from negative notes.

------
deogeo
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.

~~~
ces12
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.

~~~
deogeo
> 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.

So e-mail?

~~~
op00to
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.

~~~
kome
what's the benefit of daily updates tho?

------
Wowfunhappy
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...

~~~
KirinDave
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.

~~~
watwut
In schools here, continuous class is 45min and there are breaks between them.
No one has hours without interruption.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
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.

------
droithomme
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.

------
sundayedition
I hope it's something the parents can opt out of

------
fortran77
Would the 5th grader get or lose points if he were to have an "accident" in
class?

~~~
ALittleLight
"A penalty of '-5' for 'urinating in pants during class' has been added to
your permanent record."

------
thekevan
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."

------
_0ffh
In the future, totalitarianism will be gamified.

~~~
xiler
If you haven't already, I highly recommend you read We by Zamyatin [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29)

------
foxyv
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.

------
nerder92
How Dystropian is this thing? Who needs it? You don't want a kid you want a
Bot.

------
zxcvbn4038
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.

------
zonidjan
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.

