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Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph..

Partly to mostly cloudy. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.

Late August isn’t always the best time to seek tranquility at Poor Elijah’s house. Typically by Labor Day, he’s either frantically up to his hammer holster in a dozen unfinishable projects, or he’s wandered aimlessly from one job to the next and begun almost nothing, in which case he’s depressed.

This summer, he’d planned to caulk his house, bury electrical cable, install a cedar fence, take a computer course, and construct a coat closet. And these are just the chores that started with C.

I dropped by last weekend to check on his condition and found him sipping tonic water on his porch. Sipping tonic water doesn’t start with a C. He seemed neither frantic nor depressed.

It turned out he’d just gotten off the phone with his health insurance carrier. This isn’t ordinarily an experience that leaves a sane human being with a beatific smile on his face, especially when his claim has been denied.

Every job has its absurdities. Poor Elijah once received a memo directing resort employees no longer converse with guests about the officially non-existent snapping turtles that had not been biting them as they vacationed in the pond.

Sometimes at school, the situation seems just as bizarre. Remain after school and copy a thousand times, “Education policy will not make any sense.”

Poor Elijah was well-prepared to talk to the claims representative.

The whole thing started with a phone menu. Press 1 if you’re calling from a physician’s office. Press 2 if you’re a resident of North America. Press 3 if you played junior varsity field hockey in high school.

Forty minutes on hold later, he reached another human. Poor Elijah told her his tale of the standard diagnostic test his insurer inexplicably didn’t want to pay for. He explained what the test was, why his doctor had ordered it, and what he’d been told each of the six other times he’d called to inquire why his doctor wasn’t being paid — the claim would be reviewed.

The claims rep checked my friend’s file and informed him the claim would be reviewed.

Poor Elijah patiently moved on to the status of his most recently disallowed claim. He wanted to know which part of this visit his insurance plan wouldn’t pay for.

“I can’t tell you,” the claims rep informed him.

“Why not?” Poor Elijah inquired, just a little confused.

“Because you’re requesting confidential medical information,” she explained.

“But it’s my confidential medical information,” he countered.

“Yes,” she replied, “except I don’t know who you are.”

Poor Elijah instantly assured her he was the same person who’d been supplying confidential medical information to her for the past 10 minutes. This regrettably wasn’t good enough, since she had only his word that he was himself.

Poor Elijah chuckled. “You realize how ridiculous this sounds, don’t you?”

The claims rep wasn’t amused. “Sir, if I give you his information, and you’re not really him, he could sue us.”

Poor Elijah understood her predicament. Teachers are expected to deliver absurdities, too. Our reward is often the hostility of our students’ parents. It’s only September, and I’m already hearing complaints about “those teachers.”

I’d like to take a moment to explain.

Consider confidentiality, for example. Most of the time it makes sense. It’s why we can’t post your child’s grade point average on the bulletin board or in the local paper. It’s why we can’t reveal the intimate details of our students’ tribulations and their families’ trials.

But it’s also sometimes the reason we can’t tell you why all hell’s been breaking loose in your child’s classroom. It’s why you can tell us about the kid who’s been giving your kid a hard time, but we can’t tell you. It’s why you’re not allowed to know the reasons some students cost so much more to educate than others. It’s why we can’t answer your questions when you notice some students get to live by different rules. It’s why we sometimes sit mutely when you complain about disruptive students and classroom chaos.

It’s why we sometimes seem stupid and insensitive, even when our intentions are good.

Children have problems, just like the rest of us. They, and their parents, also have a right to privacy, coupled with an understandable desire to keep their problems to themselves, out of the glare of general public scrutiny.

The public, meaning you and me, doesn’t have the right to know everything.

The confusion comes when our problems affect somebody else. This happens a lot in the close confines of a classroom.

Your child’s reading disability isn’t any more your neighbor’s business than your child’s asthma is. What if instead your child suffered from emotional problems? Chances are you wouldn’t want your neighbor privy to those details either.

Now turn things around. Suppose your neighbor’s child has the problems, and your child is in his class. Would you want to be kept in the dark?

Suppose you’re a taxpayer. You’re allowed to know every detail — every book, every field trip, every stick of chalk, every benefit dollar that factors into your district’s per-pupil costs. Except you’re not allowed to know the details behind what it costs to educate a special needs student.

Special education is expensive. How can we intelligently discuss funding public education when we’re not allowed to know or talk about what so much money gets spent on?

On the other hand, would you like your child’s name tossed around at school board meetings, especially in our vengeful times?

These aren’t easy questions.

When we send our children to public school, we accept the fact they’ll have to put up with other children. We also accept the fact their lives and actions are no longer entirely private matters. After all, it is a public school.

We need to strike a compassionate balance between the right to privacy and the legitimate need for public oversight. We also need to recognize neither parents who ask questions nor teachers who can’t answer them, are necessarily the enemy.

There’s also a lesson here for us in the wider world where anger and malice too often find welcome.

We share that wider world, too.

We need to be on our guard against evil and take a stand against injustice. But we also need to be careful our benign misunderstandings don’t harden into suspicion, hostility and war.

Peter Berger has taught English and history for 30 years. Poor Elijah would be pleased to answer letters addressed to him in care of the editor.

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