Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
yolland said:
I agree that it's easier (plagiarism, which I typically encounter multiple times per semester--and not just from my undergrads--comes to mind), but I'm a bit confused as to what you're suggesting about the (im?)morality of it by referring to it in tandem with downloading. In the latter case there's often sincere disagreement about what does and doesn't qualify as theft, even setting aside the "record companies are greedy" rationalizations (which often seem to be acknowledging that it's theft, but arguing that in context theft isn't always wrong, depending on the behavior of the party being "deprived" through theft). But cheating is a bit less of a gray area, is it not? What room for disagreement would there be as to whether sneaking answers for a test into the classroom, or presenting work lifted from some article online as your own, is outside the bounds of the expected teacher-student relationship?
i think you've confused two issues -- in the initial post, 80s brought up two examples of moral decline: cheating, and stealing. i chose to talk about cheating in school and the possibilities as to why someone 10+ years older than i might view it as a greater problem amongst youth today (and thus strengthened his perceived notions of personal moral rectitude accorded by his membership in a particular generation). as for stealing, i chose to talk about downloading music since that was also tossed out as examples of the moral decline of America's youth.
i am not suggesting that one is on par with the other. rather, i view them as two distinct things, and i totally agree with you -- you'll notice that i did not defend cheating, but offered explanations as to why there might be more of it now than before thus furthering my overarching hypothesis that kids don't change, but the times they live in do. i agree that cheating is far more black-and-white, but the motivations to cheat have changed with the times, and i don't feel as if institutions of higher learning are at all blameless in contributing to the decline of learning-for-learning's-sake due to their obsessions with US News and World Report's annual college rankings. i see a disregard for learning and an increased concern with resume-building as a response to this environment. this is not to excuse it, or condone it, but merely to explain it.
having grown up in the thick of white middle-class achievement-obsessed suburbia where the college sticker goes on the back of the Volvo the minute a child is accepted into whatever prestigious university, i can fully understand where this response comes from because i lived in that environment. can you really expect a high schooler to draw a sense of self-worth from moral rectitude vis-a-vis "not cheating" when his whole worth (and, in suburbia, worth is often equated with achievement) being evaluated on criteria that have nothing to do with integrity, morality, or virtue?
again, wrong is wrong, and if a high schooler were caught cheating on his SATs or whatever, he'd be in the wrong and only a fool would try to defend himself. however, as we like to talk about "root causes" of terrorism that do not at all condone or excuse terrorism, we might do the same here to understand where the impluse comes from, and then look at ourselves and the values we're teaching our kids.
it took me years to understand that i was worth far more than the multiplication of my grades, SATs, and swimming times.