Beckie Lang, a nutritionist at Cambridge University, agrees the approach is exciting. Giving people GPS receivers might make them realize how little they actually do. A little gadget that can track where a child is at all times. The service is scheduled to debut in Germany and Great Britain next spring. Every 15 minutes, the child's phone communicates exact coordinates to a call center.
Parents can phone into the call center to get information about their children's whereabouts.
A child can hit a button, providing instant location information to the call center which, in emergencies, can listen in on whatever the child's handset is picking up. The idea is to hinder dropouts. If a teacher wishes to know where an absent or late pupil is, all he has to do is log onto his computer system, look up the kid's login number, and he'll be told instantaneously where the culprit is. The Netherlands has been using the system with about 15,000 students for the past 15 months, with full approval of the Dutch Ministry of Education. The Feds want your face on file.