cheating rewarded ... sort of

It is hard to read this BBC essay on university students in India who feel they have the right to cheat and not wonder about A. the growing number of Indian faces on the American (media, medical, business, etc.) landscape and B. the extent to which universities in the U.S. likewise fudge the education they provide.

I seriously doubt that India is alone in its quandary, but that doesn't make the quandary any less dispiriting.

Look at spiritual endeavor and the success stories that evolve out of what amounts to cheating ... great rafts of intellectual and emotional confetti passing for what might evolve from a practice that can be pretty hard.

When I was a kid, teachers would despair of the wiseasses who sat in the back of the classroom, shot spitballs and did their damnedest not to do the homework. "If they put as much energy into studying," the teachers would intone, "they'd be the smartest kids in the class."