Mar. 12, 2003
The liberals have been going all out to protect the privacy of
individuals against government efforts to ferret out al Qaeda sleeper
cells that might be plotting to kill us. But there is one thing I
don't understand: why aren't they just as solicitous to preserve the
Fourth Amendment rights of U.S. citizens who attend public schools?
Requiring schoolchildren to respond to nosy questionnaires has
been a pervasive abuse of children in the classroom for more than two
decades. The federal Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment was passed
in 1978 to stop this practice, but it has never been enforced and its
very existence is a rather well-kept secret despite thousands of
complaints by parents and a few lawsuits.
The stated rationale for demanding answers to nosy questionnaires
is that schools and academics need the information for research and to
develop curriculum. It would seem that interrogating terrorism
suspects in order to prevent future crimes would be a more compelling
purpose than academic peeping-Tomism.
A nosy questionnaire to be given in April to students in Fairfax
County, Virginia recently stirred up a hornet's nest. The 169-question
survey asks children about their sexual activity, drug and alcohol use,
whether or not they have considered suicide, and other personal
It should be no surprise that parents complained they didn't want
their children asked nine nosy questions about sex such as "Have you
ever had oral sex?" and "The last time you had sexual intercourse, what
one method did you or your partner use to prevent pregnancy?"
The Fairfax survey comes from an organization called Communities
that Care (CTC), which claims the survey was used in 128 sites in
Pennsylvania and is now being given in 400 sites nationwide. Hiding
behind all the do-good rhetoric about promoting "positive youth
development" and "identifying community challenges," the real purpose
is to use survey results to get government grants to finance useless
programs about sex and drugs that masquerade as "education."
These survey questions sound a lot more personally intrusive of
our constitutional right to be "secure" against "unreasonable searches"
than asking terrorism suspects whom they conspired with and how they
got their money to travel. Why aren't the people who are so concerned
about the overreaching of PATRIOT Acts I and II also concerned about
intrusive interrogations of schoolchildren?
In January, parents in Ridgewood, New Jersey filed their second
lawsuit against the school district about a second nosy questionnaire
given to schoolchildren. Seventh and eighth graders were required to
answer 55 personal questions about their use of illegal drugs and
alcohol, sexual and illegal behavior, then write their names on the
survey and turn it in for credit.
Here are some questions asked in that New Jersey survey. "Are
there guns in your home or the homes of your friends?" "Do you often
think about yourself in negative terms (stupid, worthless, unlovable,
etc.)?" "Are you engaging in risky sexual behavior (multiple partners,
no protection from STDs or unwanted pregnancy, etc.)?"
The survey also required children to inform on their own family's
misbehavior. A typical question was, "Do you have a parent,
grandparent, brother, sister, aunt, or uncle who is an alcoholic?"
This survey was given even though litigation was already pending
about a 156-question self-incriminating survey given in the same
Ridgewood schools in 1999. The earlier survey asked students as young
as age 12 "How many times, if any, in the last 12 months have you used
LSD?", "Have your ever tried to kill yourself?", and how many times
have you "stolen something from a store?" or "damaged property just for
In December 2001, the U.S. Department of Education determined that
the giving of this survey without prior written parental consent
violated the federal Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment. The same
month, the parents won their appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Third Circuit, enabling them to go forward with discovery to get
all the facts out on the table about nosy questionnaires in Ridgewood.
Parents' persistence also persuaded New Jersey to pass the Student
Survey Act requiring schools to obtain informed written parental
consent before giving surveys or tests that ask for information about
political affiliations, potentially embarrassing mental and
psychological problems, sexual behavior and attitudes, illegal or self-
incriminating behavior, or critical appraisals of family members. The
bill was vetoed by New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman in 2000,
but it was re-passed and signed into law by the New Jersey Governor in
Despite parental complaints, despite adverse rulings from the
federal appeals court and the U.S. Department of Education, despite
federal and state laws, the public school establishment is determined
to continue this abuse of children in the classroom. Schoolchildren
deserve greater protection of their privacy than terrorists.
Phyllis Schlafly column 3-12-03