Harvard University is investigating 125 students for allegedly cheating on a single exam.
One-hundred-twenty-five students. One exam.
That’s half the people enrolled in the course and 2 percent of the entire undergraduate body.
But you haven’t heard the bad part yet.
Several students have been talking to the media, not to deny cheating, but to justify it.
It was a take-home exam. The professor encouraged sharing class notes. The course had a reputation for being easy. Everybody was doing it.“That’s how people understood this course worked,” one senior reportedly said.
The instructions specifically told students not to collaborate, but half the exams had suspicious similarities that sparked an investigation that could cost some of the students their diplomas.
Cheating, of course, is nothing new. Stone-age children probably copied off each others' cave-wall paintings.
But technology has made it easier, and easier means more tempting. The Harvard students allegedly shared answers by text and e-mail.
And in the Internet age, students can’t seem to understand what's wrong with that. Why learn anything when everything can be looked up?
Not too long ago, I was invited to speak to a local high school class about the skill of writing.
Good writing begins with good reading. So I asked the students what books they had read lately.
Nobody offered an answer.
The teacher reminded them that they had recently turned in book reports.
Well, yes. But they didn’t actually read the books.
The students explained –- with no hint of shame or embarrassment, even though their teacher was standing right here -– that they had simply Googled the books.
“Nobody reads anymore,” one of them said.
And this was an honors class, by the way.
