Zen Mama Wannabe

Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater

This Zen Mama Wannabe heard some experts talking on the radio this morning about the biggest problem facing high school students these days.  It wasn’t underage drinking or sexual experimentation.  It was (are you ready for this) cheating.  That’s right – rampant cheating going on in public and private high schools across the country.  What was once considered an intelligence issue has now developed into a moral one – and the fall-out of this affects us all.  What can we do to make sure our own kids do not join this rapidly increasing epidemic? 

Studies show that over 90% of high school students say cheating is commonplace.  In fact, there is a popular YouTube video called “How to Cheat on Any Test” where you are shown how to take the label off a Coke bottle and replace it with a new one that has test answers hidden on it.  Text messaging answers to one another is so common now that many teachers are banning cell phones from the classroom (or weakly attempting to at any rate). 

Obviously technology is providing kids more opportunity to cheat.  In addition to text messages, and the internet providing whole terms papers at the click of a button, iPods are another tool commonly used.  Apparently, kids pre-record podcasts of themselves with the various notes and information they need.  Is that really any different than the kids of 20 years ago that wrote out the answers on a tissue or on their hand or arm?  Is it just more sophisticated cheating because our lives today are more sophisticated?  Perhaps – but all the experts and studies concur – cheating today is much more widespread and common than ever before. 

I read about a high school English teacher who was trying to explain the concept of perseverance to a 3rd grader she tutored.  The child had recently gotten a new video game so the teacher asked him what he would do if he had a hard time with a certain level of the game.  Expecting the boy’s answer to be, “I’d keep trying until I mastered it,” she was shocked to hear what he told her:  “I’d just go online and get the cheat codes.” 

Does that boy’s response shock you – or do you think of him as being resourceful and creative, solving the “problem” in an out-of-the-box way?  How we as parents react to all this is part of the problem.  What message are we sending our kids these days?  The news is full of accounts of Presidential lying (think Clinton and Nixon), congressional wrong-doings, financial scandals, and star athletes in all the top sports caught cheating by taking performance-enhancing drugs.  Seems like it is not just our high schools where this is running rampant!

Most parents want/insist their children to go to the top colleges and universities – but at what cost?  Studies today show that cheating isn’t just the below-average student struggling to pass a test.  Increasingly more above-average students are cheating due to the pressure they feel to gain admission to these top universities.  There is far less stigma attached to it than ever before, and students feel they need to do whatever it takes to get those top grades.  In fact, 1 in 4 students surveyed said their own parents had done more than half their homework assignment more than once.  Parents doing kids’ homework??!! 

My husband remembers how shocked he was going to a Kinko’s one night to get some reports copied and bound.  It was nearly 10pm at night and the place was hopping – with parents photocopying, pasting, and bustling around while the kids sat in the chairs along the wall fiddling with their cell phones and iPods. 

How does Average Joe compete when Susie Smith’s PARENTS are spending hours working on creating a masterpiece for her?  Susie herself is using her free time to study for her math exam – which Average Joe can’t do because he’s busy messing around with pasting images on a poster board (his parents aren’t doing it for him like Susie’s).  Do we really wonder why Average Joe feels the pressure to cheat on the math exam he didn’t have time to study for? 

"A certain percentage of the population will cheat to gain an advantage if they believe they are the only ones who can -- but a much larger portion will cheat if they believe that they must do so to avoid being at a disadvantage to large numbers of others. They feel they are “suckers” if they don’t."

Kevin P. Coyne
from Harvard Business Online
“The Raising Tide of Widespread Cheating”

Well, Susie managed to find time to study, the math teacher exclaims indigently.  Yes, but that’s because Susie has someone else doing her World Civ project for her.  But if you asked Susie’s parents, would they feel she – or they - were “cheating?”  Of course not.  Something smells in Denmark, wouldn’t you say?

What is the best thing parents can do? (And no – it is not doing their homework for them – sorry!)   Experts say the number one thing we can do is teach our kids the value of honesty.  That means explaining it, expecting it, and demonstrating it ourselves! 

We can also ease off on the pressure of getting high grades at any cost.  Somehow we have to understand that helping kids live lives with integrity is as important as doing well in school.  This is a nationwide epidemic.  Perhaps it is time we each asked ourselves: what are we doing to contribute to it – and what can we do to help?

We can say this is not something that affects us or OUR children, but sadly the numbers tell a different story.  Maybe it is time we took a closer look.  After all, what is our real goal with raising our children?  What kind of people do we want them to be?  Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater is certainly not what I aspire to - how about you?

First Day Jitters

It is the first day of school today. After a summer that seemed to whiz by, we are back trying to remember the daily school routine we so conveniently forgot over these past few months.  I don’t know about at your house, but here we are dealing with some nervousness, a little excitement at what lies ahead, and more than a few butterflies mixed in there as well.  New people to meet, new schedules to learn…. it is enough to make me more than a little anxious if I let it.  That is right, my son is doing fine with it all – it’s ME riding this emotional rollercoaster – feeling more like a Wannabe than I care to admit. 

What happened to all the hand-holding they did in Kindergarten and even for a bit in 1st grade?  The kids may not need it anymore, but many of us parents still do.  We stood there today as our new teacher blocked the doorway greeted us outside with a reassuring smile.  The kids crossed over that imaginary line, into their new world for the next 10-months.  We were forced to stay on the other side.  Ah, this growing-up business is tough.

We resorted to peering in through the tinted windows, watching our children hang up their backpacks and search to find their desks.  In some ways my son looked so mature, sitting there looking around at his new classmates – some of them familiar faces, some not.  Then BANG - the door shut, class was about to begin, and I realized it was time for me to go.   I had no place there anymore; it was time to move on. 

You can tell the experienced parents from the rest of us first-timers.  There is a tightness to our jaws when we smile, a jerky nervousness to our movements that we think we are hiding from everyone else.  The moms with older kids, who have experienced second grade before (perhaps more than once) are relaxed - more interested in chatting with their friends than reassuring themselves their child is managing just fine.  Hearing the door shut, one mom said, “Oh, did she go in already?  Well – as I was saying about this spinning class I am taking…” Will I ever get to be that carefree about the first day of school? 

Perhaps next time around, when it is my daughter’s turn to start 2nd grade, I too will feel the ease of the first day of school.  Maybe then I will know more of what to expect and thus feel more confident in what lies ahead.  Although, as one dad told me, “2nd grade is the EASY stuff.  Just wait until you hit middle school!”  Yeah, I get it.  It just might be like this for me all the way through (and can’t you just see me as they head off to college – good grief?).  First day jitters for the next 10+ years?!   This Zen Mama Wannabe better remember to breathe!