A long-time member of my household, who shall mercifully remain unnamed, recently faced the prospect of traffic school, following a "rolling stop" at a stationary stop sign. Person "M" elected to do the 8-hour course at one of the many on-line approved traffic schools. Their claimed "solution" to matter of whether a person did her own work was so peculiar, I simply can't understand what they were trying to do. There were, in effect, eight 1-hour sessions, each with a quiz at the end, then a final exam. In the course of presenting traffic information in each session, they also presented, every 10 minutes or so, a fact about an obscure Japanese cartoon character. There were questions about this character on each quiz, and on the final exam. There must be some logic here, that persuaded the state of California to approve the on-line course, but it escapes me. It could possibly address the issue of a person not reading any of the text, but simply taking the (not too demanding) quiz every hour. But that says nothing about security -- some assurance that the person taking the course is the one who got the ticket. At least person "M" now knows that Speed Racer's favorite lunch is fish tacos.
The state gets its "pound of flesh"; someone has to take the course, someone the ticket recipient knows. A price is paid. Why care if the person taking the course pays attention, as long as he/she gets the exam right? Unless it is the process of taking the course that is the thing. But then, why bother with a test? Oh, to ensure the person actually took the course and paid attention. I always though at least half of the point of traffic school was "boot camp"; you leave your comfortable environment and enter theirs for re-indoctrination. I thought the other half was punishment/deterrence. The online approach seems to defeat both. Or maybe it's about learning? Nawwwwww.......
Of the 50-or-so available traffic schools, 7 or 8 were on line. The majority of the rest were either "Pizza traffic schools" (new pizzas delivered every hour), "Chocolate traffic schools" (ditto, with chocolates), or "Comedy traffic schools (where the teachers are all "accredited"; one actually used this word) comedians. Are there lessons for traditional academic schools here? The pizza MBA?
Here's code in Texas regarding "Alternate Deliver Methods" for defensive driving. http://www.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter176/ch176bb.html#176.1110 There are both identity verification rules and course participation verification rules. My understanding is that they tie in to a couple of "third party databases" that include personal information about the student (DPS, voter records, who knows...) and then at least 20 times throughout the delivery of the class, they ask questions about bits of your personal information. Kinda creepy, I think.
Excuse me, obscure? Speed Racer and his Mach 5? And, of course, don't forget Racer X (who's really his brother, but who had a disagreement with his father and ran away). Obscure. Hmmph! I'm not even sure how old those cartoons are now, but I used to watch them as a child in southern California. Tom Nixon
