The fact that we have kept a part of middle-age inside our modern societies keeps fascinating and frightening me.
Going from Swedish to American high school felt like stepping back to elementary school in regards to personal freedom and trust.
First to set the base, in general in Sweden you have all your classes with the same 25-30 instead of different groups every period. From 7th grade we had our own schedule complete with periods without lessons where we would just hang out, walk around or go to the library and jump on the computer. In high school this ramped up even more. Loitering as a concept doesn't exist in Sweden.
To accommodate this the design of schools are completely different. The endless hallways don't really exist, instead there are areas between the classrooms with sofas, tables and whatever to enable people to hangout or study together. My school even had a café open all day. Doing group projects is the epitome of this, we'd show up at the start of the class for attendance and then take off to the library or some other place.
Contrast this with America. Hall passes to go to the restroom, hall monitors. We even had CCTV surveillance in the entire school building. If you would show up late you could be sent to the cafeteria and forcibly miss the class and have to write some essay about how wrong you were. How can a person learn to take care of themselves in such an environment?
This isn't even talking about the pledge or national anthem over the PA system.
Sorry for the rant.
Back to the topic on hand, from what I've read on Swedish news about it everyone involved generally was positive. No more the annoying wait while taking attendance. For the parents it was no different, even before this system they still immediately got a text if the kid didn't show up for class.
The questions raised by the DPA are relevant and my guess is that this will continue to be explored but with more caution towards how the data is processed to comply with this ruling.
I am French, I live in Japan. My criticism applies to these two countries as well. Within European progressives, Scandinavian countries are seen as having a really different educative system and we are wondering what we are waiting before stealing it!
On the topic at hand, I am sure it is very convenient. That's the problem: maintaining privacy is a bit less convenient, but it is important, which is why it is good government do not allow people to trade short-term convenience for longer term privacy erosion.
I see these things as my basic human rights. And nobody should accept having them restricted.
In the country where I live the school has the authority by law to be more restrictive and enforce their own rules. Which I see as necessary to some point. But I think we should teach kids and teenagers to make decisions on their own and take responsibility for their actions. And not just enforce arbitrary rules.
It was my first lesson in dealing with unjust authority and that most authority relies on the principle that most people under it will do as they say most of the time.
A useful lesson and after that I saw asking to use the bathroom as a courtesy because I was going either way.
It destroyed my fear of and respect for arbitrary authority instantly so I look back on it as a good thing today. I realised that rather than my peers turning on me on a shame basis they turned on the teacher because it was going to be them next.
It also positioned me well for dealing with the somewhat backwards ideals in my own childrens’ school.
it was one of those things that chipped away at my respect for authority - it didn't destroy it, but still dinged it. Peers still turned on me - no one thought "it could be me next". We were 7/8(?) - I'm not sure most people could reason that far ahead vs living in the moment.
What sticks with me is that we had an announcement earlier (few days or weeks earlier?) that no bathroom breaks would be given out because a few kids had 'abused the privilege' (stayed out of the room longer than they should have). So... someone else violates a trivially stupid 'rule', and my own life is negatively impacted, which is wholly unjust. That was my takeaway, which has stuck with me for ~40 years. I still remember a couple of the kids who'd been 'abusing' that privilege beforehand, and remember what impact they and that teacher had on me that day and beyond.
They use that ridiculous methodology now. For example my eldest's entire class was held back at the end of the day for 15 minutes due to one child's behaviour. Unfair and her ASD younger sister relies on her to get home and had a complete panic and breakdown over the routine change. Teachers surprisingly never available for comment after such things due to the layer of bureaucracy over everything. Formal complaint raised, pushed to the very end of their own self-inflicted process every time they screw up!