The Hidden Human Rights Curriculum of Surveillance Cameras in Schools: Due Process, Privacy, and Trust

Abstract

In this article, we explore how school principals integrate Closed Circuit TV systems in their educational practices and analyse the implications of these practices on schools’ hidden human rights curriculum. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with school principals and municipality officials, the article portrays three approaches:

(1) semi-legal disciplinary procedures, which replace educational processes and are inattentive to pupils’ voices;

(2) real-time surveillance of pupils, which includes both caring and policing practices; and

(3) an inverted use of the surveillance systems as a mechanism of producing trust, by deliberately refraining from gathering evidence in disciplinary investigations.

We argue that each of these approaches shapes the schools’ hidden human rights curriculum, by which pupils learn about due process, privacy, and autonomy, and about the power relations that determine the scope of these rights.

Keywords: school surveillance; human rights education; privacy; trust; school discipline