Cheating

And other questions

My teenaged son had a rough week full of tests, and in two of his classes he noticed people cheating. A guy in math had written a formula on his forearm, and some kids in Latin class had their phones in their laps to look up the translation.

The cheating offended him, and he asked me if he should report them.

Neither of our kids are rule-breakers, and the worst insult a person could give them is to accuse them of lying. Both have a fierce sense of fairness, and neither can abide stupidity, so the question about reporting a cheater came from a very well-developed sense of understanding right and wrong, and possibly a little indignance at the idea that someone was getting away with something that broke the rules.

After determining that neither test was graded on a curve, and there would be no particular advantage to someone else receiving a high score they hadn’t earned, I thought about it for a long moment before I answered.

“Your Latin teacher loves teaching. She has fun with the subject matter, and her classes are entertaining and interesting. She really cares, and if she knew some kids were taking advantage of her easy grace, the stress might make it less fun for her to teach her class, and consequently less fun for you to learn from her. As long as there’s no disadvantage to you or any other student, consider weighing those factors in your decision to report a cheater.”

Obviously, this was just the beginning of a much bigger conversation about the existential question of greater good, individual responsibility, and the measures of effective education in the U.S. school systems. But none of those answers mattered as much as the question had.

It was interesting to watch him process my response - to weigh the pros and cons, and to see strategic advantage and disadvantage to something that might have seemed black and white. It was even more interesting that he posed the original question. Despite a strong sense of right and wrong for himself, in an instance where he wasn’t directly affected, he wondered about a course of action and then asked an adult (his parent) for their advice.

My advice was just that - a bit of wisdom born of experience, though my experiences are ones he may never need to inform his own. That he asked is a testament to his curiosity about the world around him, and to a level of trust that we have between us - trust that I value more and more as I become less vital to his survival.

I don’t have the answers to what to do about cheaters and I don’t pretend to. I can only marvel in the questions and delight in his willingness to consider nuanced answers from a parent whose basis for truth is just a lifetime of their own experience.

Basically, we’re all making life up as we go along, and I consider it an honor that my kid wonders how I might answer a question he’s asking about how to do it.