Privacy is an issue for everyone. It’s obvious when we express outrage over warrantless wiretapping or we get spooked when Google scans our e-mail and keeps our results. There are few things so universally valued as privacy. It is especially important as teenagers grow to become more independent and less tethered to our adult support systems. It was with outrage that I read this New York Times article describing the lengths to which parents are controlling their children’s lives.

In an environment where attendance and grading are important, it can be a nightmare for teachers and administrators to keep everything organized. Submitting attendance manually or physically writing out grades and calculating averages is a thing of the past. In an age where it is relatively easy to create software solutions for grading and attendance, it’s an unconscionable waste of time to manually do things that can be easily done by computer. The result of these new software solutions (such as PowerSchool, ParentConnect, and Edline) is a vast amount of student data stored and readily accessible.

This is an important issue for me, so I apologize if I become heated in the course of this post. The article describes Nicole Dobbins, hereafter reffered to as Big Mother, and her close relationship with her children, or rather her children’s grades. The school to which Big Mother’s children belong has decided, in an act of complete idiocy and lacking any sort of educational thought or reason, to allow parents to access the vast amount of student data at will, online, through text messages, and e-mails. A grade entered by a teacher appears instantly. Trackers can be set so Big Mother knows when her children get a bad grade.

These programs are a signal of a deeply troubling pathology plaguing the United States. Instead of Big Mother interacting with her children, she takes the lazy approach. Big Mother becomes omniscient and, while benevolent, uses misguided methods of the worst kind. Her approach to parenting is Orwellian and independece seems to be a word not found in her vocabulary. Carrying out conversations with her children is just too much work for Big Mother, it seems. Instead, she spies on her children by day and doesn’t let them forget the bad quiz grade by night. This attitude is the latest chapter in a series of stories about a parenting community that is increasingly grades-obsessed, overbearing, power-hungry, dominnering, autocratic, high-handed, despotic, and oppressive, with troubling behavior bordering on tyrannical and bullying.

Grades are important and every parent should be involved in the lives of their children, but this method of staying involved is disgusting and indicative of an education system failing the very people who it should be trying to help. School is only partly about learning academics. Especially for gifted students, learning the material required by the curriculum is only part of the day, learning to be socially independent and function apart from parental guidance is most important. This spying capability that is gained by parents is a huge step back from the goals of school.

Parents need to get involved in a way that makes a difference. Conversation about school and tests is essential. Communication with teachers is vital. It is despicable that some school districts have even cancelled their parent-teacher conferences because parents felt sufficiently informed by their spying. As I’ve said before in my post about standardized testing, learning cannot be reduced to a grade. Interpretation and understanding of grades is crucial.

Each individual student needs to be in control of their lives and each individual parent has a moral responsibility to not just prepare a child for next year, but for a life of independence. Grades can’t be a substitute for real communication. A certain amount of privacy is the right of every person, including every student. Report cards, requirements for tests and quizzes to be signed, conversations with students and teachers, phone calls, e-mails to parents from teachers, and e-mails to teachers from parents are important, and they are enough. This spying is not right under any moral standard. Big Mother and other parents and schools buying into this system are doing a great disservice to students and to the future generation.

So these educational software solutions should be internal only. When it comes time for report cards or conferences, then parents can unleash their anger or express concern. This provides a balance of independence and good parenting, not laziness. Parents should always be interested, but not over-bearing.