High school students may soon get telephone calls or even visits from armed services recruiting officers, telling them about the attractive features of careers in the military. A new law, the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act, lets the recruiting offices ask high schools for the names, addresses and telephone numbers of their students. Eastern Maine high schools have already gotten such calls. Until now, most school administrators have held home information carefully confidential.

School administrators, like people in general, are patriotic, law-abiding folks. But they also give high priority to the privacy rights of their students. For some, these requests from the military have struck a raw nerve, although most of them are reluctant to complain publicly. The same goes for the Maine Department of Education. It has sent out an advisory to the high schools asking them to inform all parents of their rights to have the data given out or to have it withheld.

Some local administrators are speaking out. Arnold Greenberg, director of the Liberty School in Blue Hill, has received a request from the Navy, but he says he ignored it. “I wouldn’t release the names and addresses of students to any organization or corporation or anyone else. It would be an invasion of privacy. I’m not singling out the military. But if push comes to shove, I would always come down on the side of students’ privacy.”

Bangor High School has notified parents, inviting them to approve or disapprove of providing the data to the recruiting offices. Results are still being tabulated, but they are running heavily against giving out the information. Mount Desert Island Regional High School will hand over the lists unless parents specifically forbid it.

One school administrator expressed concern about the possible impact on a student when a uniformed recruiting officer shows up at the door. Without giving it much thought, the student might find himself or herself with an appointment at the recruiting office and well on the way toward a military career. This, of course, is in neither the student’s nor the military’s interest.

Parents should have a clear choice in this matter. A school is not doing its duty if it hands over the lists unless parents take the initiative of refusing. That’s the old Book of the Month Club system, where they keep on sending you the books unless you take the trouble to tell them to stop. There are many excellent reasons to support a career in the military, but schools should require written approval before they give out the information to the military or to others.