When privacy means deprivation

The right to a private life is a fundamental human need — that is not in dispute. However, our current practices of privacy, particularly when it comes to privacy for children, are a recipe for deprivation, an unintended consequence of our otherwise good intentions.

Two articles in the Oct. 17 Free Press — “If every child matters, why no public inquiry?” by Marion Willis; and “Student violence surges” by Maggie Macintosh — raised serious questions which make privacy seem more like neglect than benefit.

A democratic society has every right to be concerned about privacy and its many advantages. Ancient Greeks likened privacy to home life, a safe place where you could make foolish mistakes, behavioural and otherwise, away from public scrutiny and judgment. The point was that it was a place to test your ideas to make them fit for appearing in public.

Our public schools are to a large measure built on those premises — classrooms out of the public eye where children can make mistakes and learn without paying a price. It’s why all visitors must first report to the office to establish their validity. That sense of privacy has proved beneficial and essential as we try to teach children the civility, respect, empathy, integrity and personal responsibility essential for entering and contributing to a healthy public — thriving communities and a humane society where everyone is welcomed and valued.

Unfortunately, we have come to know that homes and schools are not necessarily safe spaces. Most sexual abuse remains “privately” home or family-based, and most child violence occurs at schools. That should not be a surprise, as that is where children spend most of their best waking hours.

In the first case, it is a reasonable expectation that the outside world will not encroach on the home so lawful intervention is tricky and not to be undertaken lightly. However, our laws are quite clear now — even suspected child abuse must be reported and followed up on. Notions of privacy, which have been exploited by familiar abusers to hide their actions, are no longer protected by law.

In the second instance, violence in schools must be recognized for what it most likely is, a problem caused by other adults, and not the teachers or teaching assistants who don’t deserve to be its victims.

Somewhere along their life’s journey — except where there are prior developmental or mental issues — “violent” children have been conditioned to, or learned, violence as the response to their inner turmoil and reaction to authority. Getting to violence’s origins would, I suggest, in most cases mean an override of the privacy of the adults in their lives. Unless we can mitigate violence’s roots, violence-management training might only serve to make helpers feel more frustrated and inadequate when it doesn’t work.

Willis recounted a current violence to children — living in homeless encampments amid abject poverty, destitution, substance abuse and mental debility. Homelessness itself is a preventable and unjustifiable human condition. Homelessness for children, as Willis rightfully claims, is a human atrocity which deprives them a childhood and futures, theirs and ours. If privacy means not intervening, then it also means we are abandoning them — so much for “every child matters.”

Similarly, children who struggle in schools, or don’t attend, often face “adult” challenges at home — extreme poverty, poor diets, lack of proper clothing, substance-abusing caregivers, gangs, even physical violence. Health records show they start off with the same body weights and brain sizes as their peers, but that their life circumstances catch up with them before they start school, meaning they have somehow been short-changed in very early life. The consequences of their cumulative deprivation are already public in schools.

Ironically, at a time when the technology exists to track virtually all factors affecting children and to share them easily, we seem unwilling to do so. It’s like we learned nothing from the Phoenix Sinclair inquiry and the Tina Fontaine tragedy. We are still losing children, letting them go hungry, not clothing them properly and watching them survive in dangerous settings.

We would do well to remember that privacy is different for children who are learning how to live than for the adults who should have learned. We should attempt again to achieve the goal of the Healthy Child Manitoba initiative – open sharing between the departments of health, families, justice and education for the sake of our children.

Confronting privacy as deprivation, considering the potential human consequences for both children and adults, is a human necessity worth the occasional possibility of wrongly provoking adults.

John R. Wiens is dean emeritus at the faculty of education, University of Manitoba.