I’ve always preferred having blinds or curtains covering the windows in my home — at least the windows that face the street or my neighbors. I don’t want just anybody peeking into my house.
But the windows of my home office are only partly covered, allowing light to stream in and brighten the room and to let me look out to watch cardinals perch in nearby trees.
And, because I live in a three-story house, I have a few windows up high that aren’t covered at all, which allows me to look out over the evergreens and maple trees without any worry about nosy neighbors peering into my private space.
I’m guessing that most folks are like me — picking and choosing the times and places where we value our privacy and the times and places where we’re willing to open up a little because of the benefit we’ll gain by being a little less protective. But I certainly know people who pull heavy drapes over every window in the house, and others who cast off every shred of covering from all their windows.
Always and everywhere, adults must ensure that children are protected from having too much revealed about them too soon or to the wrong people.
Being mindful of the different expectations for privacy in our private lives is good practice for addressing those issues in our public and professional lives, especially when our public lives involve children. Neither the extreme of closing off all data access nor opening up everything to the public works for me. The solution lies somewhere in the middle.
If adults feel a twinge of concern about losing some of our privacy in our private lives, perhaps that will make all of us more sensitive about protecting the privacy of the children in our care in our public and professional lives. At Kappan, for example, we are very mindful about our need to protect the privacy of students: We don’t use photographs of children unless we’ve received permission from their parents or their schools, and our authors don’t use the real names of children. These are small concessions for respecting a child’s right to be protected.
Still we must concede that we are losing some of our privacy and even our understanding of privacy as big data has escalated its presence in our world. No reasonable person can expect a return to rotary dial phones, transistor radios, and black-and-white TVs that don’t track our favorites, our locations, or how long we’re connected. Unless you are living a life that doesn’t include a smartphone, a credit card, or any sort of online activity, you are producing data virtually nonstop. And somebody someplace is collecting and storing that data, probably for a commercial purpose. Every time new data is collected our privacy is being impinged a little bit more.
In schools, we must ensure that data collection is tied to good purposes. Data gateways are giving parents better information about their children’s attendance and performance in school. Communities also are getting a better picture of school performance thanks to more sophisticated data collection. Improved data collection also means we know more about how various groups of students perform — information that we must have if we’re going to close those gaps.
Even as we value what we can learn from data, both big and small, educators, policy makers, and vendors can and should focus on how to productively and safely adapt to this new reality. Always and everywhere, adults must ensure that children are protected from having too much revealed about them too soon or to the wrong people.
Schools can make data work for them if they stay focused on ensuring that they’re collecting and using data that will inform student learning and safeguarding student privacy in the process.
Citation: Richardson, J. (2015). The editor’s note: Mindful privacy. Phi Delta Kappan, 96 (6), 4.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joan Richardson
Joan Richardson is the former director of the PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools and the former editor-in-chief of Phi Delta Kappan magazine.
