<The Highschool URL is >>http://www.honoring.com.<< And its only relevance is in its recent survey's finding that 80% of the cream of our hs students have cheated, they and their parents approving of that process; and that the biggest threat they feel is of social and moral decay; and more than 90% consider themselves happy.>
Well, George, this statistic about cheating doesn't surprise me at all. The outside world is truly a swamp, and increased percentages of children cheating simply reflects this. After all, if Bill Clinton, who takes an oath to uphold and enforce the law of the land, can get away with lying and cheating without any real consequence, because everything is political rather than clearly right or wrong, what kind of values are we teaching our children. "Go for it!!!" would seem to be one of the strongest messages being sent.
My own child does not cheat. You may not have read the post where all her friends were shoplifting in a store at the mall, and she waited outside because she does not do that. I was very proud of her when I found out about it, much later. She doesn't cheat at school, either. She knows that doing that would make her feel bad inside, and thus hurt her. Our family teaches morals in a very simple way--that sleeping well is an extremely important thing in life. And while we expect her to do her own best, we realize that this will vary from subject to subject, and that there are disturbing growth spurts in these years which are distracting to school performance.
I do think it is important to remember that most children watch their parents lie--mostly small lies--every day. It must be confusing for a child to sort out the moral difference between calling in sick when you are not but have important personal business to attend to (is there anyone who has never, ever done this?), and lying in a destructive way. In our own family, we constantly discuss the difference, for example, between lying simply to avoid hurting someone's feelings, which can sometimes be gracious, and lying about important things.
I know two families in San Francisco because the children are friendly with my daughter and were in school with her for many years. Both of the mothers are teachers, one at the college level, and one at a private high school. One has a daughter who is openly abusive towards her parents, dresses like a Goth, smokes marijuana, and attends one of the very "best" private high schools here. Her mother seriously believes that self-esteem is heightened by attending private high school, and that public high school students end up feeling "not quite as special" no matter what their level of academic achievement. This idea that private school is always better is really prevalent in the middle class here--I have debated it endlessly at parties, arguing that it is an elitist and limiting notion. It seems that public school can be okay up until eighth grade, if through scheming or luck of the draw you managed to get your child into one of the best ones. But after that, the argument is that if your child does not learn to function and feel accepted at home among the very wealthy, he or she will never network sucessfully enough to climb to the top of whatever ladder presents itself.
The second child--one of the sweetest and most beautiful children I have ever met--has become anorexic and has heart problems, and may die. Anorexia is an eating disorder which seems to be about body image, but occurs in pressured, upper middle class children who are expected to be so perfect that the only thing still in their control is whether they eat or not, and so they stop.
These children come from two "good" families which seem very healthy from the outside. In fact, I am finding that once you scrape the surface, it is incredible how messed up most of us are.
So when the statistics you cite in your poll show that parents of honors students are either oblivious to cheating or tacitly encourage it, I am not surprised. I think most parents have had a collective emotional breakdown today. I know that they are afraid that if their children are not the very best, they will not get the very best jobs, and will not support themselves well. But they have absolutely lost touch with reality or values of any sort, as was also pointed out in the post where Penni talks of the father who would be willing to go so far as endowing a building at Princeton just to get his underachieving son in there.
I think the rise in cheating is exactly proportional to the increased expectations of our children, in other words. Children are to some large degree reflections of their children, so we need to look at them if we want to solve this problem. Ditto the Plano children on heroin. I have watched interviews with some of their parents, who were so totally out of touch with their children's actual lives and experiences--so busy leading the good life--that through lack of interest, or total denial, their children perished.
Why is a good college the only career track? What is wrong with becoming a cabinet maker, or a sound engineer, or a dental hygienist, or a small business owner? I think almost everyone has gone mad, frankly! |
