From Cheating to Suing

When you break rules, you pay the price for breaking those rules. When you first sign a pledge that you are not going to break the rules and then you break the rules anyhow, and the pledge stipulates the exact punishment that rule breakers will receive, you quite well should not be the least bit surprised when you find yourself on the receiving end of a punishment. This is even more the case in a scholastic environment, where children and even young adults (college) need to learn how to harmoniously live in a society that tells you that rules are there for your good and that you need to follow the rules in order to get along and do well in said society.

With that in mind let us consider the case of a certain high school sophmore whose parents are suing the school because the son was removed from honors English. He was removed from this class because he broke the rules — he copied the homework of another student. What’s more, said student had signed an Academic Honesty Pledge that had a very strict punishment attached to it — anyone caught cheating would be removed from the group.

According to the parents suing the school, the fact that their son cheated is not being questioned — they are well aware that he cheated and they feel terrible and are convinced that he is regretful of it as well. The reason that they are suing is because they felt that the policies regarding punishment are vague. Vague? You cannot be any less vague than to say that each and every student who is caught cheating will be removed from the class with no exceptions whatsoever?

Except that they were clearly aware of the punishment and yet they are so desperate to keep their precious snowflake in the class that he does not seem to deserve that they are willing to go to any extent, including outright lying, in order to do so.

It would seem that the rotten apple did not fall too far from the tree if this is the kind of extortion that a couple of parents will attempt to use to protect their child from themselves. Instead of doing this, the parents would have been better off allowing their child to be removed from the class and strongly reprimanding him that he is receiving the appropriate punishment considering the grievous scholastic crime of trying to pass off someone else’s work as his own.