Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Omar

Education Professor,

King Saud University

 

IN the United Kingdom, authorities have installed surveillance cameras inside classrooms. The goal is to watch teachers in action and develop their performance. The educational supervisor later watches the video and monitors all the activities and interactions that happened inside the classroom between the teacher and the students.



Let’s imagine that our classrooms had cameras. Would a teacher dare spend the entire time of class in fumbling with a cell phone? By the way, this did happen in one of our classrooms, according to a senior educational official. He told me the teacher sat still and all he did throughout the class was program his cell phone. If our classrooms had cameras, would a teacher dare shave his beard inside a classroom in one of the villages in Madinah?



Many teachers prefer to close the classroom door while teaching. Only Allah knows what this teacher is doing inside. Is he teaching or doing something else? Unfortunately, there are no regulations that differentiate between a creative teacher who performs his job so well and another who does not perform any of the duties with which he is entrusted.



Only when our classrooms have cameras, will teachers do their best and our students’ behavior problems will largely be solved. Educational supervisors will be able to watch a video and evaluate a teacher’s performance.



As usual, some might object to the idea of having cameras in classrooms and say they violate privacy. But, a classroom is not a place where we can do private things.