Surveillance in educational spaces: the electronic monitoring of an everyday campus life.

CCTV cameras, ID cards, integrated databases, email data collection, internet tracking, audits and performance evaluations of faculty and departments are becoming more common in educational spaces. Several institutions, from nurseries to universities and from different geographical contexts, are experiencing an increase in surveillance practices. These spaces are facing a process of rationalization since they are being transformed to provide increased efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. While surveillance in schools has benefits, such as helping to improve learning abilities and promoting the security of children and faculty, it raises some concerns with excessive attention to rationalization. These concerns point to the restraint of individual liberties, the lack of trust in students, teachers and staff and the creation of oppressive and segregated spaces. The excess of rationalization can lead to the emergence of irrationalities. Moreover, the dialectical approach suggests that rationalization can also result in the emergence of counter-rationalities: for instance, students can use cellphone cameras to watch the watchers in a process of counter-surveillance. Using examples gathered mainly from the Queen's University campus at Kingston - ON, Canada, and comparing them to a few Brazilian illustrations, this paper aims to discuss some of the consequences of electronic surveillance in educational everyday life.