Teaching and Privacy and Public

Teaching and Privacy

Privacy and Public Education

An issue of pressing concern for educators and administrators alike, though not one that necessarily comes up in the day-to-day tasks of providing and education to students, is maintaining the privacy of these students. Though this is not a task or responsibility that is always explicitly laid out for all of those taking part in the provision of education to students in public institutions, it is a necessary and inherent part of the responsibilities of teachers, principals, and others privy to private information about the students. Some cases of the responsibility to protect student privacy are fairly obvious, such as when knowledge of medical issues is obtained either directly or indirectly, or when personal details are shared in confidence, but other issues are less clear cut. Educational information about specific students, and details of student performance, are also things that must be kept carefully private by educators and administrators in order to properly perform their duties.

There are several ways in which the release of personal educational information could be harmful to students, and would constitute a violation of the teachers' responsibility to their students. As long as the performance capabilities of a given student are sufficient to allow them to pass on to the next grade level, for instance, certain aspects of diminished performance should not necessarily be shared without prior consent on the part of the student and/or the student's parents. This could create stigmas in the student's ongoing education and the approach of educators that could ultimately harm the student's development and educational potential, limiting the learning that takes place and unfairly labeling the student (Chowdary 2004).

Of course, there are instances where certain information regarding a student's performance should be shared with other educators, as this can also lead to more carefully tailored instructional methods to assist students with difficulties and present appropriate challenges to individual learners. Even when information should be shared with other educators and/or administrators, however, this does not mean that the information should become a part of general or public knowledge (Omstein & Levine 2007). Again, the risk of stigmatizing the student or in some way calling their development into question is quite high in certain circumstances, and even in the most mundane of instances other parents and non-educators might attempt to exert undue influence over another student's placement based on rumors or knowledge obtained through a lapse in privacy protection. This ultimately takes the power of decision making out of the teachers' and administrators' hands; instead of leaving the information and the decisions to those trained and equipped to handle them, breaching the privacy rights of students could potentially lead to a sort of mob rule of the schools, where the loudest voices make the decisions.