Parents object to children getting fingerprinted

Outraged parents in Michigan are calling the fingerprinting of their 5th graders an invasion of privacy, according to a report in The Detroit News recently. Administrators of the state's standardized education tests apparently "broke the law" by requiring Michigan's 122,000 public school fifth-graders to submit their fingerprints in class without their parents' permission.

All fifth-graders had to fill in a "Fingerprint Investigation Journal" that includes the outline of a small hand to which students were told to apply their fingerprints. The Journal was part of a science segment of this year's Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) test.

Peter Bunton of the state MEAP's office told the News that they were "not fingerprinting kids and sending their prints to the FBI or filing them in Lansing." The journals, he said, would be "thrown away, torn up, discarded, or sent home with the kids."

Some parents, however, didn't want their children's prints surrendered to school officials under any circumstances, without their permission. State law requires written permission for children to be fingerprinted unless the child is a delinquent or otherwise ordered to be fingerprinted by a judge.
"Fingerprints are something that are private," said Robert Sedler, a Wayne State University law professor. "They should only be disclosed voluntarily or in limited circumstances of a criminal investigation."

One multiple questions asks students why "some cities want to get the fingerprints of all little children." The answer is clearly so "a lost child could be identified." The question was designed to train children that volunteering such personal information to authorities is harmless, Sedler stated.
Said one mother, "There are so many morals and values that are rammed through under the guise of curriculum, it's just another assault on parental authority."