Lie, Cheat, Steal: High School ethics surveyed

ENPFidealist
Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:54:34 +0000

I read all 12 pages of this. Many interesting points.
I think that the whole world is a rat race, and though I adhere to the “system” per se, in theory all these rules and regulations are mere suggestions for what a person living in society should do. As compmom had said several times before, it’s a system to keep order not chaos.

Many other people would like it if most people adhered to the system because the general whole will benefit, but for those who don’t, they don’t and end up kind of cutting their way up the system.

I may be the first one to say this I think. For some reason, I believe that in the whole context of things, any one anything is very insignificant over the course of human life. Cheating or not will not fundamentally make someone a better or worse person. Like it or not, this person’s behavior was pretty much already set in stone based on the environment and also genetic predetermination.

I personally don’t like it when others cheat, but I think deep inside everyone who doesn’t like it seems not to because in terms of cost-benefit analysis, cheating will not be in our favor for any variety of reasons (bad at lying, think that it’ll make you a worse person etc.) Those who do are feel that in terms of cost-benefit analysis cheating is totally worthwhile. Even though a lot of people say cheating is morally wrong, I think intrinsically these people don’t like cheating because cheating doesn’t work out for them. I’m not making broad sweeping generalizations here, I’m talking about this at a very instinctual level.

In case I didn’t make it clear I don’t like cheating. I don’t like to use others for my own personal gain. I don’t like to have personal vendettas against people. I think I personally try to stay with the system because despite all these societal turbulences and whatnot, most people will view what I did as “right”.

Then again I’m not saying I’ve never cheated on a test or anything. Like I forgot poster’s name but in my school cheating is a collective entity. I think the problem lay with not only the student’s attitudes, but the fundamental institution called education. I talked about not cheating but I guess the broken educational system to one of my friends, and we concluded that a lot of the problems were coming from the ridiculous amounts of busywork that were assigned.

I agree also that not everything can be quantified and so all the stats hunters are missing something very basic, when they’re ignoring this inquantifiable aspect of our nature.

I once joked about this once, but I think the best feasible way to admit people into college is to spend an entire day with the person. of course this is not practical but… regardless…

I also know that grades are not actually a good assessment of anything, but neither is anything else. Grades only measure the condition of a set person on a set day at a set time. It doesn’t account for the fact that that person will continue to remember that information.

Based on my sixteen years of experience (Take this for what it’s worth i really don’t care) I think this whole thing is a rat race. People do what they can to get ahead. You can follow the rules if you want. I try to follow the system and I utterly fail. I stray when I feel totally utterly chaotic and destable that I feel compelled to cheat I have done this at least a total of twenty odd times the last sixteen years. I’ve written trig identities up my leg in tenth grade and I haven’t really felt remorseful. Then again I have. I knew it was fundamentally wrong, but in that set circumstance it was “right”.

I also don’t like being judgmental. I believe in relative morality and in any sense the right morals can be a luxury to some people. A luxury they can’t afford.

Increasingly I find school and I guess through passive observation society is a place that constantly weeds out people. People they either feel are too incompetent or incapable regardless of how accurately that label sticks.

I genuinely feel that in any set of circumstances people try their best even if they claim they aren’t, people must have a reason they received such and such result. Even if they claimd they underperformed, under that set of specific circumstances I think it’s the best that they could have done.

I think no one has addressed this before about why many teenagers look for short term goals. In part yes because at a young age our ADHD like minds are trained to do so along with the media etc, but for me it is a matter of sanity.

Believe it or not, I thought for awhile or rather I “knew” I was going to Harvard. The whole process or whatever didn’t occur to me. I guess by knew, I mean I expected it to happen almost second nature. This previous bit is prolly irrelevant. As I said before, this point no one will disagree with, even though a given moment in our lives could be defining or significant, the overall effect will be negligible (like a function graph at positive or negative infinity).

So I tend to get lazy, or I guess not do all that is within my power moment to moment. If I disregard all external factors and focus on this one moment, I usually do the best I can. If I do consider everything else I GO INSANE! The volume of work I have to deal with on a nightly basis is insane.

This is the second fundamental problem I find with high school. High school is supposed to teach us to be good citizens, but it is increasingly becoming a pressure cooker for the highly enviable seats of college admission. This is preposterous! High school is not doing it’s job.

For more context: Six of this year’s graduating seniors have been accepted early decision into Cornell and a bunch of other schools.

On the flip side, I understand writing a fair test, or giving a fair amount of homework is extremely difficult, but I don’t think it’s fair to punish someone who is only a bit slower than another person even though that slow person is just as competent.

More random stuff:
On tenure… I think that this should be banned. It’s not doing anything and in my experience it is increasing incompetency. All the incompetent and virtually unfireable teachers have tenure at my school. They should not be teaching. We the students might as well be teaching ourselves.

Do I have morals? Yes I think so. I’m not a bad person. I’m pretty sure I believe in God. I think everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs. I won’t go up to someone and evangelize at them. I think every belief deserves respect. Yes you can expect me to be the first person to shoot down anyone who vandalizes anything of religious value.

I think this is what matters.

Conclusion or I guess my thoughts after reading/writing all this:
Cheaters will cheat regardless of what anyone thinks. Everyone is given a choice to comply or to choose their own lifestyle. The education system is flawed, but incompetency on part of the administrations have made it worse. Nothing matters in the long run because society is apathetic. (I never said people are). This is how things stand.

I propose the following:
Students should be freely allowed to evaluate teachers based on a self-defined set of principles and a well defined set of circumstances (like college). Student should have more input in the administration and governing of schools. The school is there to serve us not the other way around. (In other words, teachers happen to make money from teaching, but they’re there to serve us the students). Grades should be abolished and replaced with narratives. Yes this means accepting less people per school and hiring more COMPETENT teachers, but this is something they’ve been discussing for years isn’t it? Exams should be indvidualized, oral and given on a 1:1 basis. Students need to be able to directly regulate the amount of homework we receive a night. All repetitive mechanical homework should be optional (I mean to say is anything that is strictly a review of classwork should be optional.) Only work requiring innovative new thinking should be mandatory. Lastly our schools need more federal funding.