Ve ri tas

This morning I have been thinking about the recent cheating scandal at Harvard University, where approximately half of a class of 250 students are suspected of cheating on a take home examination.  The initial reports declined to mention the name of the course, but in an opinion article printed in the Washington Post this morning (apparently on the website since 8/31), Professor Howard Gardner revealed that the cheating occurred in "Introduction to Congress."  I was surprised by this for a few reasons:

1)  Why anything involving cheating and Congress is worthy of news.
2)  How precocious the students at Harvard must be if they are learning how to cheat so early on in a class about Congress.  In most colleges that doesn't begin until the 200 level course.
3)  Why anyone is shocked that a large percentage of people would refrain from such a temptation on a take home exam.

The first two thoughts haven't really occupied much of my time, but I was considering the third point during my commute to work.  The fact is, as is pointed out in the editorial, our society values success over honesty.  Flaunting laws and/or ethics is viewed by far too many people as a worthwhile price to pay to attain a goal.  Unfortunately, teaching our children otherwise is difficult when they are so often surrounded by public figures who succeed by doing just that.  As an example, I remember having a long discussion with one of my kids over why insider trading is wrong.  One only needs to look as far as our leaders to recognize how pervasive is this contempt for ethics.  From my own lowly vantage point, it seems that running the country in the best interest of the country comes as a secondary goal to running the country in the best interests of the leaders who are in office.  My wife is a strong supporter of limiting public office seats to one term (of whatever length that may be), and I find myself agreeing with her.  If our leaders spent less time worrying about retaining their positions of power, then they might actually make decisions that benefit the nation first.  It may be a bit naive of me to think that, but it could not be worse than the way our current system seems to be heading.  The only problem with this is finding enough of those people in power who would support such legislation.  Catch 22 anyone?