Moral Oral and the Case of the Enhanced Grades
I read an interesting article this morning about individuals self described as “Morally Superior”, of which a good amount partake in decidedly immoral activities. The study saw a correlation between those saying they had moral values, and that cheating, such as on tests, was “justifiable” under certain circumstances. Some expert opinion was also given that this is likely to be higher still in competitive environments.
Reading this this morning with the recent news of Barry Bond’s indictment on my mind, the article made just too much sense. Obviously there is a hint of common sense, “The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward*” certainly applies here, that those who can think of cheating as justifiable in some occurrences might actually partake in said cheating is not exactly earth shattering. What was interesting, though, were some of the examples given.
One example had a student cheating on a test to get into med school with the idea that they would help many more people, many times over, once they were a doctor. Ok, I can kind of see that. The other was a law student who tore pages out of a book in order to gain an advantage in a class.
Whoa whoa, wait- what? This is more than just ‘cheating’. Cheating is gaining an advantage for yourself- at least in my definition of it. But placing a disadvantage on a group of others is a bit more. I’m not going to get into the destructive/vandal aspect of the act, but that, too, is present.
I’m sure some of you will say that gaining an advantage is the same as giving all others a disadvantage- but that depends on how you gain said advantage. And a law student doing this- yeah there are lawyers out there doing good. I don’t know enough about lawyers to say they are all evil, but stereotypes come from somewhere, and I’ve got to believe you can’t exactly rationalize cheating in the law profession as easily as you can in the medical example.
I know, moral relativism can lead to some sticky situations, But fortunately I only see black and white late at night.
What was even sillier, I thought, were the solutions to the problem. Managers should only hire ethical employees, and we should train employees with ethics courses, etc. Now, i don’t mean to be a wet blanket here, but has anyone else taken these courses? It’s not exactly ‘Gone Baby Gone’ with the ethical choice I’m making here. Stealing the pencil is obvious- And why can’t i take that box of wine from a business partner. Obviously he thinks i did a great job through out the year, and fondly remembers me at Christmas time.
Still, i understand the business value of ethics training, but I just don’t see it’s effectiveness. While a business can say “how dare he, we even trained him to know these situations!” they leave out the important “with pencils instead of millions and millions of dollars” corollary.
It all reminds me of a assignment i had in my college writing class- to give a speech on ethics in the classroom. Cheating is rampant in grad schools- mostly because the professors are more worried about their research than the students. I came up with several ideas, one was the integration of professional societies into classrooms, smaller class room sizes, more teacher involvement with the students personal lives- after all class is only a small part of the college education.
But in all reality, I don’t know how to stop cheating- no one does. Not even the Bible. And if the Bible can’t tell you something, well.. you know.. you’ll have to expand your reading.
* Arthur Koestler