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Cheating Cheaters Who Cheat

Have you heard? It’s all over the news: people cheat! That’s right; human beings actually cheat. Next thing you know they’ll be lying as well. (Cheating and lying being close relations of the “I want what I want” family.) All (or most) flippancy aside, we probably can all agree that cheating is hardly news, or new. There’s a good chance that the guy who invented fire was really just the guy standing behind the guy who invented fire and felt the urge to push him into the flame, create a “do you smell something burning” diversion and declare; “My word! What is this I have made? Let us call it fire.” Maybe he didn’t get enough attention as a child, maybe his father dragged his mother around by the hair one too many times, or maybe his cave was in the wrong part of town. But more likely than not, he was just some guy who wanted to be the one who invented fire.

So why in the world do we (feign) surprise when hearing of business, government or humans involved in cheating? Why is it simply cataclysmic when students (from good schools!) cheat? The recent ‘outbreaks’ at Stuyvesant High School and Harvard have sounded alarm bells in the education and parenting community. How could this happen to academically gifted individuals? The assumption is that cheating is not for people who need only work hard to get what they want. Than who exactly is it for? Cheating by any other name is simply a short cut. The notion that people with resources (intellectual or financial) would not engage in short cuts is absurd.

Of course it would appear that these pumpkin eaters are not to blame. Oh no, apparently they can not resist how very easy cheating has become. Evidently (or so the argument goes) the internet causes cheating (and pornography, adultery, obesity, gambling and shopping addiction.) When Harvard students were given a take-home exam they could not resist the sweet siren song of the internet. We must assume then that their parents and grandparents were able to resist the charms of the extensive Harvard library system because, well because Boston is cold damn it. There’s getting an A and there’s staying warm for heaven’s sake. In class cheating has been made all the more tempting with smart-phones. No longer must students burden themselves with the arduous mechanics of passing notes! Just type your question on the phone that has no business being in the classroom. And what of wikipedia?! Certainly there is no way a person could be expected to see that the operative word in “copy and paste” is ‘copy!’

Blaming the internet is fun but it’s also cheating. It is avoiding doing the real work to find the answer. Could it be that there is an increase in cheating because there is an increase in testing? Could it be that once we made every kid an honor student or worthy of a “best snack provider” trophy, we robbed them of an interest in working hard for something they want? Could it be that growing up in a world of leaders who cheat and lie with impunity has an effect on children? Maybe it’s a little of everything or a bit of nothing. But what it isn’t, is a side effect of the internet.

 
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Posted by on September 8, 2012 in Education

 

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@ Work :( TTYL

Have we all heard just about enough about the dangers, both physical and evolutionary, of texting?  Do we need another article haranguing against smart-phones on dinner tables?  Isn’t it crystal clear to us all that “living in the moment” is now only a behavior for which we pay thousands of dollars to experience in a spa? Technology has changed our orientation to the world around us.  But I don’t particularly care about all that right now.

What I do care about is personal phone calls at work.  (Quaint, isn’t it?  That sentence conjures up visions of Judy Holliday at the switchboard.)  For reasons which allude me, the technology of a “phone call” has obscured the intent of the call.  The fact that people needn’t speak to communicate, or use a telephone belonging to an employer, seems to have blurred the lines for many.  Show of hands, how many times has the clerk at your checkout register been tapping his/her acrylics onto a phone?  Have you ever entered a boutique and not heard the shopkeeper on a personal call?  The last time you frequented a restaurant with a host/hostess, were they looking down and squinting, behind their station in the dark?  There are work situations in which personal communication is not only permissible, it is probably encouraged.  I was recently on a film shoot at which the principals (waiting upwards to 15 minutes between takes) typed away, happily passing the time.  But those particular employees were not actually working while making their personal calls.  Their attention was not expected to be anywhere but on themselves.

Now here’s where the rant builds up steam.  I have lost count of how many of New York’s finest I have seen texting or making personal phone calls while working.  I suppose the traffic officer would argue; “Hey, I can give tickets and text at the same time.”  Perhaps, but you’re in uniform and; a) it is unseemly to be engaged in personal activity, and b) you are an officer, and if you’re not seeing something and saying something, why should I?  I have also seen “beat” officers, standing and texting on a corner, officers in squad cars (thankfully, the passengers not the drivers) texting as well.  Now unless that is how the police department now communicates with its officers (and for all I know, it is) I find this truly distressing.

I am not suggesting that we all don’t have personal emergencies that need attention.  But what I’ve witnessed is far more lackadaisical than an emergency would ever suggest.  Somehow, because we have the technology, we’ve decided that rules of the workplace and common decorum need no longer apply.  I’m no techie wonk, but I’m willing to posit, that we’re only going to get more little sexy toys with which to play.  Perhaps we should engage, now, in the real face to face conversations about what is appropriate and what is not.  Maybe I’m just an old fashioned gal, but I enjoy being looked in the eye, be it by a police officer or dinner companion (or one and the same, if it’s Tom Selleck in Blue Blood.)

 

 
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Posted by on November 21, 2011 in Cultural Critique

 

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