<p>In my son’s IB Spanish class, all of the students routinely cheated except my son. They either copied from the top native speaker whose educated parents helped her do her own homework, or they divided the work and copied from each other. They did this because the homework was not over what she taught and was so long that no one could complete it in the time provided by themselves. I asked the teacher to give more time, reduce the length of the lessons and give homework over what she was teaching and testing on. But, she refused. My son pulled an all nighter every week on Monday night which was also the night he had an eighth class at night. This made him basically exhausted and sick all year. The homework counted for forty per cent of the grade. His grades on homework were in the low 90’s–very low for him. The others would make phenomenal homework grades because they were doing little or none of it themselves and double checking with others on the little they did if they did any at all. On the tests, however, my son and the top native speaker both made grades in the high nineties while the rest of the class flunked. </p>
<p>The teacher also never graded it till grades were due, so my son could not learn from his mistakes, a very important thing to do since she had not taught much of what the homework covered in the first place. This left him making the same mistakes over and over and getting marked down for it before he could see their original mistakes. This made it harder for the other kids who might have resisted cheating if they thought they had a chance to pass without it to do the right thing.</p>
<p>At first the teacher told me what a great mom I was. After I asked her to change her homework practices, she refused to speak to me.
I asked the principal to address these matters, but he said she had been there too long for him to be able to do anything. </p>
<p>The other parents were aghast at the homework practices and knew their kids were cheating, but all of them refused to say anything because they feared retaliation when it came to recommendations and scholarship awards. They also refused to insist their kids do their own work. So, the parents who were mostly physicians, attorneys, programmers, scientists, and teachers, sat mute while I did the bidding for the students and my son did his own work. Well, it just made me the bad guy and them the good parents to the administration and the teacher, who was also department head.</p>
<p>That top native speaker got a gold medal in the national Spanish exam, and my son got a silver. The others scored very low. You see, their homework grades were very good, usually high nineties, but they flunked almost every test to the student. The teacher allowed them to make up the difference by doing “projects” like making Spanish valentines and taking super easy makeup tests, as well as dropping low grades. Apparently, she changed some grades for some kids too simply by adding twenty or thirty points. </p>
<p>I felt somewhat that my efforts had been in vain, but my son held his course and pulled those all nighters. I was proud of him though as a mother I felt horrible letting him do it. In the end, he recovered and went on to accept at a college that has a strong honor code. I believe my standing up for what was right encouraged him to continue to refuse to cheat when he could have given in out of exhaustion and illness. </p>
<p>We are a culture of cheaters. We can complain anonymously here, but what good does that really do? We might instead or in addition at least in our homes and businesses and government offices refuse to be dishonest and insist that coworkers be honest as well. Our kids really do follow in our footsteps. We do want them to do the right thing for us when we are old and for our grandkids when they raise them. Think about that.</p>