Evening star., 1963-09-19
Shoppers

10 Keep secret CLle COuC6nJS Oh q question:
naire recently answered by scores of
Montgomery Junior College students is
hardly surprising. This truly, is an
amazing document. If we were in the
deans place, we'd want to hide it, too.
In fact, we might consider just hiding.
Questionnaires seeking to ferret out
the interests, talents, capacities and mo-
tivationS of young people have of course
achieved a wide vogue in our schools.
Within bounds, they serve useful pur-
poses. But there is something decidedly
different about the impertinent manner
in which this particular questionable,
dug up by new Montgomery County
weekly, the Monitor, invades the pri-
vacy of individual parents.
Among its 284 questions, for ex-
ample; is this: How do your parents
usually lean in national politicS?"
Or: what is your best estimate Of
the total income last year of your pa
rental family2 How does your parental
family'S economic position compare with
what 1t was 10 years ago? Is your fam
ily's income: most earned (e.g., wages,
salaries, feeS); most unearned (e.g., div
idends, interest, rent, annuitieS, capital
gains)?"
Or these:
(Which Of the categories below
comes closest to describing the national
ethnic background of your fathers an
cestors2" CA multiple choice list fol-
lows.)
who in your parental family really
has had the final say about thing con-
corning the children?"
what is (was) your fathers reli-
gious background"
How often has your father attend
ed religious services in the past year
or SOP"
If we may pose a question Of our
own, where in the world did the schools
get the idea that these things are any
of their business?
It's quite clear that the developer
Of the questionnaire, the Educational
Testing Service Of Princeton, N. j., is not
collecting all this data for nefarious
purposes. Presumably it will use such
powers as may be at its disposal to pro-
tect the confidentiality of the replies.
But that is nowhere near good
enough-the intention is not the issue
here. The fact is that the name of each
student is printed on the answer sheet.
The fact Is that this information passes
through the hands Of good many peo-
pie who are in no way entitled to it.
The fact is that the school system would
not dream of asking parent how he
voted, how much of his income is un-
earned, or whether he goes to church.
1t is doubly culpable when it under
takes to extract this information from
the children in its custody.
Montgomery County parents are not
the only ones who are being favored
with this exercise in Snoopery. In all,
according to Dean Deyo, the same ques-
tionnaire is being answered in some 20
colleges and universities across the
Nation.
There is a fine bit of irony, how
ever, in the fact that the so-called Glib
eral" elements in Montgomery, who
object so bitterly to having teachers
fingerprintS checked against county po-
lice files as protection for school chill
dren, see nothing wrong with asking
these same children to spread intimate
details Of their families lives on such
a record
DR.. Clifford Beck, member Of the
liberal minority of the Montgomery
School Board, defends the QUESTIONABLE
on, grounds that 1t may reveal some
new methods of measuring ability and
behavior" Charles w. Bell, the school
board chairman, comes much closer to
the truth when he calls 1t IAN intrusion
and an insult to the rights of parent
and student alike"