Many people are applauding the new move to put surveillance cameras in classrooms, halls, bathrooms and other areas in schools.

Although this seems like a wonderful solution to protect students, what we are doing is training a new generation of kids to accept surveillance as a part of life.

We are telling them that their constitutional rights are fungible and can be exchanged for the “hope” of a safer environment.

This is the same nanny state that monitors everything from the temperature of coffee to what types of conversations are acceptable at office water coolers.

As a country, we have willingly given up more and more rights in the name of a safer society, yet people still burn themselves with hot coffee.

The answer is not to punish the innocent by treating them as common criminals in a prison . . . the answer is accountability and setting standards and rules that will automatically cull out the troublemakers.

Lines at airports are insufferably long because a handful of people abused their freedom and now the rest of the world suffers.

Punishment is a far better motivator for the one bad apple, than holding the rest of the barrel hostage to their behavior.