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By Adriana Gamondes

According to a 2008 study performed in Denmark, the mortality rate for individuals with autism is twice that of the general population. A more recent Swedish study found the rate 5.6 fold higher than expected. Whichever is the true number, the message is clear: far more disabled die young. Among the more common causes of death such as seizure, accident and circulatory disease, asphyxiation is included among unnatural causes.  

Michael Carey’s thirteen year old son was one of the victims of “increased mortality”—a euphemism for the violent death Jonathan Carey suffered at the hands of staff at the O.D. Heck state residential care facility in New York. Since Jonathan’s death in 2007, Michael Carrey has lobbied for improvements within the state’s dangerous disability system, including calling for video and audio surveillance of all special needs classrooms, on transportation, in group and residential homes.

What happened in place of the changes Carey battled for appears to be worse than nothing. The bill signed by Governor Cuomo in June created yet another go-between agency to divert calls and reports of institutional abuse away from 911 and law enforcement. The bill also gives power to the governor to appoint institutional officials and makes the prosecution of accused care workers and administrators more difficult than it already was by raising the bar from “credible evidence” to “preponderance of evidence.” Carey believes the bill was clearly intended to prevent reports of institutional abuse from reaching the justice system.  

Listen to Carey discussing the bill:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...oPiGY12XZY


Even after Jonathan’s death was covered in The New York Times, the abuse at the center continued according to care worker Mary Maioriello, who provided the Times with recordings of  O.D. Heck administrators taken secretly during meetings in which these administrators fail to show much interest in or stop the assaults and systematic degradation of residents which Maioriello. After the tapes were released, the administrators were replaced.

The need for surveillance is often demonstrated by surveillance.  

Educators and caretakers like Maioriello have argued that they want cameras in classrooms and buses for the protection of vulnerable children and adults as well as protection for staff and support for whistleblowers.  School bus driver Yvonne Mack Colclough forced a district to investigate staff assault on a child with autism when she demanded that the district review the bus video recording. She felt the school still sanctioned her for putting children first, though they could not charge her with making false reports, which has happened to other whistleblowers; and the culprits were arrested, which is quite rare in school abuse cases.

One ironic argument against cameras in schools and buses is that “educators put up with a lot from kids”—indeed they do. Just ask bus monitor Karen Klein—a beacon of clemency in the face of really vile verbal abuse by typical students. Her case demonstrates the upside for staff of having audio and video, since those who saw the tape raised over half a million dollars for her.

What’s potentially objectionable in the Klein coverage is that one of the bullies is visible in the Youtube recording. As rotten as his behavior was, he’s still a minor and should be privacy protected in the media. I’m only sharing it because it’s already been widely shared but it’s regrettable that the child’s face wasn’t blurred or pixelated. Mainstream media tends to be legally cautious about obscuring identity for minors, particularly those who could be committing a crime, but obviously the practice needs to be extended to social media as well.

Privacy is the central sticking point in the camera debate in general. On the one hand, government employees have limited expectations of privacy while on the job and, if families had equal access, the cameras would be turned on “Big Brother” in effect. This would also be true of most private disability schools which take district tuition for outplacement.  On the other hand, there are very legitimate arguments in defense of civil liberties that cameras in schools could have a stultifying effect on student individuality.

In a discussion of the Surveillance State, Salon blogger Glen Greenwald criticized the policy of placing cameras on school buses because of the Pavlovian effect it would have on children. In his argument, Greenwald discussed only minor peer bullying, not the more extreme types of incident which frequently effect disabled children (HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE).  Greenwald also doesn’t mention the rate of sexual abuse of children by adults in schools, which reportedly impacts somewhere between 3.7% and 10% of students under 18.

In fact, California may eventually have mandated surveillance in schools due to reports of rampant sexual abuse of children, which is apparently not limited to Penn State or the Catholic Church.  Tim Stanley of The Telegraph wrote:

Certainly, paedophile activities are not limited to the American Catholic Church. A recent report by the US Department of Education revealed that a child is more than 100 times more likely to be sexually abused by a public school teacher than by a priest. To quote: “a study by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops concluded that 10,667 young people were sexually mistreated by priests between 1950 and 2002. In contrast, [it] extrapolates from a national survey conducted for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation in 2000 that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000.” Ergo, Sandusky’s activities are part of a wider story of criminal infiltration of our national institutions.

And who will stop it? Whistleblowers are not alone in encountering bureaucratic retaliation. School retaliation against parents attempting to advocate against abuse of disabled students or denial of services has risen with the rate of disability.

Retaliation can be defined as “using official resources to ‘punish’ parents,” and it can take a wide range of forms from refusing to respond to emails or return phone calls, not allowing parents to view records, or continually canceling school meetings and conferences.  But sometimes the retaliation can be more sinister.  Anecdotally the internet is filled with stories of parents who claim their school districts have reported them to child protective services, filed truancy charges against them, or had restraining orders imposed on them, all as the result of their advocacy on behalf of their children.

The more the Department of Education carves out legal immunity for schools and the more advocates are disempowered, the more schools will appear as a haven for every species of child abuser.  This is especially true of disability-only schools and classrooms, where most of the deaths and injuries to students occur.  Disabled children are also at a doubled risk of sexual abuse: the epidemic has served up an endless supply of silent victims.

The statistics are very disturbing but Greenwald still has a point: certain genuine crises can too easily be used as Trojan horses for incursions on constitutionally-protected freedoms. Take Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez’s misrepresentation of “online predators” as part of his administration’s campaign to justify internet surveillance—this from the man who signed off on water boarding.  Anyone questioning the campaign’s noble surface motives—combatting pedophilia— risked being accused of a “pro-molestation” stance or being “anti-child safety.” This is why facts are important especially when an issue is a moral hostage-taker and can be used to disguise government over-reach. Though there probably are a huge number of online predators, the answer may be more vigilant parental monitoring, not the death of internet privacy.

By a similar token, putting cameras in schools and on buses and allowing parent access could arguably be a piecemeal policy, not a bid to put more cameras up in public spaces and increase domestic surveillance. In any event I agree that cameras should be taken down from public squares and warrantless domestic spying should cease in the US.  

If there are counterbalances to prevent school surveillance from being institutionally misused to suppress student individuality or political freedom, these issues should certainly be explored and measures taken. But if the concern is that cameras in schools and on buses are a Trojan horse to unleash more general surveillance of private citizens, it’s important to realize that many schools already have cameras installed for internal use to bust and discipline students and protect property; and wired schools already share this evidence with law enforcement—although rarely to report on staff. And again, families are frequently denied access to the same tapes.  Maybe the answer is that a parent “union” controls the technology from the outset or parents wire individual children, waiving wiretapping constraints in the few states which require two-party consent for audiorecording (these vary in rigidity as it stands).

Regarding existing surveillance, schools in fact have no legal grounds to withhold this kind of evidence from parents if it exists, though many falsely cite student privacy concerns. Through a series of rhetorical questions, Wrightslaw  illustrates why schools cannot claim “privacy” in denying families access to video:
1.1.      Are parents allowed to visit their child's school? (To meet with a teacher, pick a child up for a doctor's appointment, etc.)
2.2.      Are parents allowed to go on field trips?

Are parents allowed to do volunteer work at the school?

Assuming the answers to these questions are "yes," the school's "privacy issue" argument doesn't hold water. No law prevents parents from knowing the identity of kids who attend school, or kids who are in their child's class, or kids who ride the school bus.

By the time any family files a FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) request for access to tapes, schools will often “lose” the evidence, so access and enforcement are on the block for reform— otherwise the rest is already in place on paper.

Some object to cameras on the grounds that the use of restraint against the disabled students is necessary and surveillance and public “PC” misinterpretation would hinder staff and put them at risk.  But a 1999 study found that the rate of staff injuries in the most violent mental wards were reduced significantly when the use of aversives like restraint were severely limited and replaced by alternative positive strategies.

Staff training decreases use of seclusion and restraint in an acute psychiatric hospital.

Forster et al.

Abstract

Rates of seclusion and restraint in an urban psychiatric hospital were compared during the 12-month periods before and after implementing the recommendations of a multidisciplinary quality improvement work-group convened to reduce the hospital's use of physical containment. Interventions included a mandatory staff training session on the management of assaultive behavior, weekly discussion items during team meetings for each local ward, and hospital-wide publicity charting the ongoing progress of the effort. Total annual rates of restraint dropped 13.8%. The average duration of restraint per admission decreased 54.6%. Staff injuries were reduced by 18.8% during the study period.

The Government Accountability Office found in 2009 that the vast majority of deaths and injuries to disabled children in schools stemmed from restraint in response to noncompliance, not because these children posed a risk to themselves or others. This was our personal experience when our children were abused and our experience is common.

As the Forster et al. study demonstrates, training in positive strategies is crucial for reducing the potential for abuse. But Matthew Israel, the founder of the Judge Rotenberg “shock” Center— in the media again after the horrific video  emerged of a child being tortured at the center—went to Harvard. The private school teacher who abused our daughter in 2011 has a master’s degree. Education does not guarantee ethics.  The most tragic illustration of this was the invention of totalitarianism in the twentieth century—when some of the most highly educated people in the world caused more death and destruction within a few decades than in previous centuries combined.  Training would cut down on the considerable number of deaths and injuries which occur when undertrained staff lack the means but not the will to apply positive approaches—though this would not make everyone in a system honest or endow them with compassion.

Totalitarianism also brought us the surveillance state, though not surveillance of the state: that’s a democratic construct.

For all these reasons, many believe that there should be federal laws in place protecting children from abusive practices in schools, including the mandated use of video surveillance with sound capacity. All due respect to those who argue for states’ rights, but states and communities  have had many years to make reforms and little has changed.  State and local authorities have subjective and economic concerns when regional institutions are exposed as unsafe for children.  

For example, state authorities in Texas had received reports of deplorable conditions in state run group homes for years; but only when the infamous “fight club” video was released in the national media showing night shift workers terrorizing disabled group home residents into assaulting one another were authorities forced to respond with emergency legislation.  Though the perpetrators in this case were prosecuted, the state continues to have problems with conditions in group homes. Releasing video may bring public pressure to bear but in itself is not sufficient to enforce standards.  But public awareness and outcry typically increase with each exposure and institutions lose funding.  

Members of the public may wax apathetic in response to written reports of abuse of the disabled. Some might envision dangerous, rampaging mentally challenged males and be glad these individuals are “kept under control.” But the public has a significantly different response when exposed to images of a sweet disabled adult like Taylor Hartley being brutalized by a care worker: it becomes apparent that not all the victims fit the fearful stereotype. Study after study in social psychology has found that breaking up stereotypes in the media has measurable impact on public attitudes.

It matters. Reporter Donna Pitman from KMBC 9 News Kansas City recently posted a photograph of two unidentified individuals who, upon seeing a man in a wheelchair crying because he couldn’t see the stage at a concert, lifted the man up and held him for the duration of the event so he had a good view.

How did these good Samaritans come to be motivated? The public genuinely needs to be exposed to the full human side of disability—from pleasure in living and accomplishment to exposés on risk, deprivation and suffering— to break through the more shallow media rubrics.  

All the same, cameras are not a panacea and change is a process. For example, even after the Rotenberg torture video was released to the public, Massachusetts legislators left the issue out of the state budget.  But this administrative regression to “pre-video” denial has not gone over well with the public and the issue may impact elections.  

What are the “real numbers” for school abuse of the disabled? No one knows.  There’s no mandated national reporting for schools.  Senator Harkin’s Keeping All Students Safe Act (S. 2020 and H.R. 1831), is up for vote and attempts to address the reporting issue and others, but the bill does not include cameras, which many advocates had hoped for.

In 1998, the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis estimated that 3 individuals with special needs die every week in US schools and Institutions due to abusive practices like restraint and seclusion.  The Hartford Courant, which had requested the study, concluded that the actual toll could be three to ten times higher than estimated.  
30 restraint deaths per week in the US?  A total of 1560 per year? It’s inconceivable. The estimates must be wrong. But there they are— and no one can either confirm or deny them.  

Granted Harvard’s estimates included adults in mental health facilities but stressed that the highest statistical risk was to children. Would it really have been so hard to hide, for example, 30 child deaths per year among approximately 4,000 children ages 0-19 who died annually in Texas in the mid-1990’s?

Of the 23 restraint deaths within an 11 month period investigated by the Courant, 13 were children with special needs.  Only one case led to a criminal investigation. Official causes of death were variously cited as “asphyxiation,” “cardiac arrhythmia,” “severe asthma attack,” etc. Among the overall 53,000 child deaths per year in the US, more than 14,000 are attributed to a range of “natural” and “accidental” causes which could potentially conceal death by mistreatment. The Scandinavian autism mortality studies echoed this obtuse language—causes of death are often reported simply as “cardiac insufficiency,” “circulatory disease” and “accident.”  It’s only because a Georgia school had been unable to hide its “therapeutic” mistreatment of a child with cerebral palsy that his involved parents understood how he died and were able to alert authorities.

It’s also chilling that nothing has improved since 1998 other than Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) outlawing certain forms of restraints in institutions and residential care. Though this particular law is clearly still under-enforced, it should by rights also apply to any institution which is federally funded. But state Protection and Advocacy agencies have unilaterally refused to even apply the law to schools. So considering the six fold increase in autism since 1998 and the parallel explosion of many other types of cognitive injuries and behavioral disorders— and considering the lack of protection and enforcement in schools— there is no reason to believe the 3-per-week death toll has gone down and all the more reason to believe that the scene of the crime is likely to be schools. Again, since there’s no mandatory reporting and schools have no incentive to report on themselves, the toll could have easily risen and no one would know.

I always shake my head when people say they can’t believe such things are happening “in this day and age,” as if human nature has somehow teleologically evolved since people skinned dogs and lit them on fire for sport in the old west or brought the kids to public executions, etc.  Nothing in history—particularly in the last century— provides us with any evidence that human nature is ethically advancing.  I think history argues that we are as good or as bad as we ever were or will be. Did anyone believe that no one would ever skin dogs again if there was no enforcement against it? Or abuse the disabled?

If anything in society has changed from time to time, it might only prove that social organization and enforcement can promote or defeat the best or worst human motivations within systems. It’s something to think about considering that institutional treatment of the disabled—or children in general— has never been able to stand up to transparency in any day or any age.  

Connecticut Group Home Arrest (CNN)

This needs to happen.  As a parent of a child with limited language skills, I'm terrified that something will happen to him and I will have no way of knowing.  At one point, a bus monitor actually filed a grievance against my "violent" son.  He's only 4 years old!  

If you are a bus monitor on a special needs bus, and you're not qualified to deal with a child who is throwing a fit, then you need to find another job, not blame my son for your ineptitude.  This person could have hurt my son by not knowing how to properly restrain him during one of these fits.  He's not a malicious kid, he's as sweet as sugar, he's got brain damage thanks to his birthmother.  Once the fit passes, he's his sweet self again.  Animosity towards special needs CHILDREN is uncalled for.  

So our kids should have to tolerate abuse, just because you feel so put upon by caring for them?  

Get another job.  

There is a very simple solution - have everyone sign a waiver at the beginning of the school year.  Many private schools do this.  


  

This is a great argument for inclusive classrooms.  Its good for the child with special needs, and its good for the typical child to learn to be nurturing, tolerant, and to appreciate differences in others.  My oldest son sat next to a girl with Down's for a good part of the school year.  He was always talking about how much fun he had with her.  

Good info.

Name removed from quote boxes at poster's request. - d

This post was last modified: 07-19-2012 02:25 AM by d_olson27.

By the time I had finished manually inserting all those links I had no words to express how I felt.

This is a worldwide problem which would appear to dwarf the scale of abuse in the catholic church.

"Certainly, paedophile activities are not limited to the American Catholic Church. A recent report by the US Department of Education revealed that a child is more than 100 times more likely to be sexually abused by a public school teacher than by a priest.

“A study by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops concluded that 10,667 young people were sexually mistreated by priests between 1950 and 2002. In contrast, [it] extrapolates from a national survey conducted for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation in 2000 that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000.”

Just as the church was reluctant to do anything about the abuse in their ranks so society appears reluctant to do anything about the abuse around them.

We must fight this inertia because it is our kids, with their communiction difficulties, that are a prime target.

I agree with Aspiemomma that it is very important to have inclusive classrooms especially in junior schools. There are good arguments for and against in secondary education where each childs needs should be taken into account.

But in those early years it is crucial for NT children to learn to mix with and understand our children.

In her teenage years my daughter joined a siblings club so she could meet other kids with a brother like hers.
Over the years it was clear that they were the only friends visiting each others' houses. Why, because the other friends couldn't handle it and if they did visit once they never came back. Yet her brother was only trying to be friendly in his own funny way.

Then as an adult these segregated kids are supposed to leave school and magically fit into society.
But society doesn't know how to handle them and doesn't appear willing to start learning.

We have to start the education of NT's from an early age.

One word sums up most, if not than at least some of my feelings and thoughts in this situation and situations quite like this.

Why?!

Why did this happen? Why does this continue to happen?

I've said it once and I'll say it again:

Society has it's head so far up its arse that it's choking itself with its own entrails

Don't forget also some_bloke that mother's and parents would rather have their child die from AIDS or Cancer or suffer from childhood diabetes or some other slow horrible death than have their child born with Autism or Down Syndrome. This is the kind of bullshit Autism Speaks is pulling and brainwashing people with.

I hope the mothers who aborted their unborn babies just for having Down Syndrome die the most horrible, painful, and slowest deaths possible....

Please forgive me for being so cruel but no words can describe how much I absolutely hate evilness in this world causes by greed and ignorance ....

I don't see how someone can have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a classroom with thirty to forty witnesses.

This post was last modified: 07-22-2012 03:30 AM by Lang.

That is a very big WHY Some Bloke. Why did the top brass in the catholic church do nothing to stop the abuse for so long. All they did was shuffle the priests around when the original complaints came in, which actually just gave them a fresh supply of victims.

Was it simply misplaced loyalty to colleagues.

Is the same happening in schools as it is becoming clear that those few incidents caught on camera are just the tip of the iceberg. When its not caught on camera the schools can quietly move the abusers on to avoid a scandel.

We are all familiar with many of those 'HERE' links in the OP, they seem to pop up with regular monotony and everybody tut tuts before moving on to the next item of news.

All we get are silly excuses for not installing CCTV which ConLang and Aspiemomma have pointed out are ridiculous.

I don't hear complaints about human rights when CCTV is used to catch people committing the heinous crime of overstaying in the car park.

I don't hear people complaining about privacy when CCTV is used in supermarkets to protect the non-verbal fruit and veg.

So why can't our vulnerable children be afforded the same protection.

    ++Stop Press++Stop Press++

Since my last post I've recieved this message from somebody who wishes to remain anonymous.

"Dear AFF members,

The introduction of CCTV in special needs classrooms and transport will not protect your lovely speech impaired children from being abused.

Just look in the supermarkets. People are still shaking coconuts, feeling their plums and everybody wants to get their hands on the longest cucumber.

Because this is a family forum I will not elaborate on the disgusting fondling of the melons and cherries, which goes on in full view of the CCTV cameras.

I hope this proves to you all, that installing CCTV around your delicious children will not prevent us from doing our jobs in the way we see fit.

It would be futile."

Hmmm... well thats food for thought.

I must pop down to the supermarket, I have a strange urge to nibble on a firm stick of celery, with a splattering of mayonaise of course!

Incidentally, there were cameras in the administrative offices at my middle school, as I remember.  None in the classroom.  But certainly out in the hall.  

Frankly, I think the whole "I'll do as I damn well please" attitude is given too much value.  And I have seen people deride who were primo examples of it in practice.  And this was especially true of teachers in the SPED system.  

I think society as a whole sort of enhances it, too.  When I was working as an assistent to kids with DD's, I would disclose it to people, and I got this weird "moral standing" in their eyes.  I'm sure some people who don't know the kind of suffering that people in those professions are capable of inflicting might enjoy it (and keep in mind I'm not even accusing anybody of anything, only remarking on potentiality!) but the application of angelic status to such a thing shocked and disturbed me.  I went into it specifically because of the rotten behavior of some, and despite the good behavior of others.  To this day I worry I failed to explain my discomfort.  I am certain that I did not give a convincing exposé.  Sheesh, I met a guy who joked about wrestling a client to the ground because the dude did not want to wear socks.  This client led an extremely sedentary lifestyle and probably could have gotten through life without so much as shoes, but he didn't like socks, and this worker used his experience as a military person marching hundreds of miles in boots over rough terrain to demonstrate the rationality of his response.  He got defensive to the point of genuine anger when I suggested that his behavior was beyond the pale.  Okay, maybe I should have been more gentle, but it's hard to be nice about this.  Experiencing daily assault is not an easy topic to smile about.

Not to mention five-point restraint, even when done properly, has been linked to several deaths, and there are other forms of restraint that are more dangerous, and staff are often untrained.

From what I see this is a common set up.
Funny how I don't recall any stories of teaching staff abusing admin staff and yet they claim we don't need surveillence in the classrooms.

Travelling from school to school I'm often told, 'But the children at this school have severe challenging behavior.'

They seem incapable of grasping the simple truth lurking just behind that statement.
I am often left wondering exactly who has the learning difficulties!

    ++Stop Press++Stop Press++

Since my last post I've recieved this message from somebody who wishes to remain anonymous.

"Dear AFF members,

The introduction of CCTV in special needs classrooms and transport will not protect your lovely speech impaired children from being abused.

Just look in the supermarkets. People are still shaking coconuts, feeling their plums and everybody wants to get their hands on the longest cucumber.

Because this is a family forum I will not elaborate on the disgusting fondling of the melons and cherries, which goes on in full view of the CCTV cameras.

I hope this proves to you all, that installing CCTV around your delicious children will not prevent us from doing our jobs in the way we see fit.

It would be futile."

Hmmm... well thats food for thought.

I must pop down to the supermarket, I have a strange urge to nibble on a firm stick of celery, with a splattering of mayonaise of course!

What?  Is that saying that this person is fondling children?

heterodox Wrote:

    ++Stop Press++Stop Press++

Since my last post I've recieved this message from somebody who wishes to remain anonymous.

"Dear AFF members,

The introduction of CCTV in special needs classrooms and transport will not protect your lovely speech impaired children from being abused.

Just look in the supermarkets. People are still shaking coconuts, feeling their plums and everybody wants to get their hands on the longest cucumber.

Because this is a family forum I will not elaborate on the disgusting fondling of the melons and cherries, which goes on in full view of the CCTV cameras.

I hope this proves to you all, that installing CCTV around your delicious children will not prevent us from doing our jobs in the way we see fit.

It would be futile."

Hmmm... well thats food for thought.

I must pop down to the supermarket, I have a strange urge to nibble on a firm stick of celery, with a splattering of mayonaise of course!

What?  Is that saying that this person is fondling children?

Sorry that post was supposed to be humorous. A sort of sick parady of the sick excuses made to not put our children under surveillance to protect them from the preditors who know they can get away with it in schools.

I have been told off before for my inappropriate humour. I apologise.

I would just like to add that it does imply that the people making these silly excuses are probably the ones guilty of the abuse.
So your observation was spot on.

AspieMomma Wrote:

heterodox Wrote:

    ++Stop Press++Stop Press++

Since my last post I've recieved this message from somebody who wishes to remain anonymous.

"Dear AFF members,

The introduction of CCTV in special needs classrooms and transport will not protect your lovely speech impaired children from being abused.

Just look in the supermarkets. People are still shaking coconuts, feeling their plums and everybody wants to get their hands on the longest cucumber.

Because this is a family forum I will not elaborate on the disgusting fondling of the melons and cherries, which goes on in full view of the CCTV cameras.

I hope this proves to you all, that installing CCTV around your delicious children will not prevent us from doing our jobs in the way we see fit.

It would be futile."

Hmmm... well thats food for thought.

I must pop down to the supermarket, I have a strange urge to nibble on a firm stick of celery, with a splattering of mayonaise of course!

What?  Is that saying that this person is fondling children?

Sorry that post was supposed to be humorous. A sort of sick parady of the sick excuses made to not put our children under surveillance to protect them from the preditors who know they can get away with it in schools.

I have been told off before for my inappropriate humour. I apologise.

I would just like to add that it does imply that the people making these silly excuses are probably the ones guilty of the abuse.
So your observation was spot on.

No offense taken!  OK, now I get it, it is funny.  Sad, but funny.

Sorry, I often have a hard time telling when someone is joking.

I would object to being on camera at my warehouse job. Then again, there wouldn't be much reason to do that. It's a pretty easy check that I'm doing my job well. First, I get the work done on time. Second, in all the time I've worked there, there have only two been customer complaints that had to do with my job (one was a faulty product before it got to me and the other turned out to be bogus).

On the other hand, when I'm teaching kids at my dojo, I'm used to the parents sitting at the back of the room, watching class. I don't object to that, since I am in a situation where I have the ability to use authority to harm other people. With martial arts, some parents want to make sure that the setting is safe for their kids. My instructor has always been supportive of that, and I wholeheartedly agree with him.