Backlog: Schoolchildren are increasingly being prepared to receive the mark of the beast

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Revelation 13:16-17

When I was in kindergarten in Edmonton in 1966-67, I didn't go to a bus stop. A station wagon with a "School Bus" sign on top, driven by a nice, attractive brunette (who must be in her late 70s now, if she's still alive), stopped at the house of each child, and took us all downtown, where we had kindergarten in the basement of the Seven Seas restaurant, and then took us home afterward. I'll take that over the surveillance technology of the 21st century.

The following article, six years old but still relevant (maybe now just for historical purposes), illustrates that surveillance technology can have positive aspects. No parents want their children to be on the wrong bus or in the wrong school, or who-knows-where. However, it's only a matter of time before an electronically-scanned card today becomes a mark in the right hand or forehead tomorrow. As reported by Andrea Sands in the Edmonton Journal, September 20, 2013:

When five-year-old Jack Rattray gets on his school bus to leave Wes Hosford Elementary School in Sherwood Park, a swipe of his electronic bus pass tells school district authorities he's aboard.

Jack swipes the card again when he gets off the bus at a busy transfer centre at Salisbury Composite High School, where he boards a second bus to his day home with another swipe. On days his mom isn't working, Jack takes a different bus from school straight home.

Jack's mom, Sydney Rattray, can log in at work using an application called My Stop and see on a map where Jack's bus is located and its estimated arrival time.

"If he got confused one day and thought he was supposed to go to the day home, I could find him," said Rattray, a pharmacy technician who does shift work at the University of Alberta.

"It feels safe. You can monitor without being there, without hovering...It does give me peace of mind."

Elk Island Public Schools was the first school district in Canada to use student-scanning bus passes and GPS on all its buses, said transportation director Lisa Weder.

Now, Edmonton Public Schools and Edmonton Catholic Schools are testing similar on-board GPS systems that will let parents locate their child's bus pass on a map.

Elk Island Public Schools started rolling out the technology last year, Weder said.

More than 8,000 of Elk Island Public Schools' 16,500 students travel on about 165 buses running 591 routes across Sherwood Park, Fort Saskatchewan, Vegreville and Strathcona County, she said.

The student-scan and GPS technology, plus an automated system called Checkmate that ensures no child is accidentally left on the bus, are now fully installed at a cost of $275,000, Weder said.

"Because we run so many transfers and we transport kindergarten to Grade 12 students on all the same buses, it really helps us if a student boards an incorrect bus," Weder said.

Last week, a four-year-old boy in Winnipeg was dropped off at the wrong school, where he spent his entire first day of kindergarten before someone noticed the error. Also last week, an Edmonton boy got off his bus at the wrong school when he took the bus for the first time to kindergarten, Global News reported.

A school bus driver with the Northern Lights School District was suspended in January 2012 after a young boy was left alone on a bus for an entire school day.

Mix-ups are most common with new students, and more frequent at the beginning of the school year, said Weder.

"There's a significant number of students boarding incorrect buses. In the first two weeks of school, we probably had, I would say, at least four to five cases a day where students were boarding incorrect buses."

The scanned bus passes allow school authorities to monitor which bus each student boards and leaves and at what time. The data also shows transportation planners exactly how many students are taking the bus each day so they can plan most efficiently, Weder added.

"You could have 70 students registered to a 72-passenger bus, but who's actually riding that bus?"

On-board GPS systems also send data about what the bus is doing to school district staff, Weder said. That means employees can see if a bus is speeding, if it stops completely at railway crossings, if it follows the designated route, if it stops on time and in the proper spots to pick up or drop off children, she said.

Edmonton Public Schools started testing on-board GPS at six schools this fall, said district spokeswoman Jane Sterling.