Cheating or Cooperation

There was an interesting piece today in the NY Times regarding a "cheating" scandal at Harvard. The article leads with:

Harvard students suspected in a major cheating scandal said on Friday that many of the accusations are based on innocent — or at least tolerated — collaboration among students, and with help from graduate-student teachers who sometimes gave them answers to test questions. 

 Harvard University revealed on Wednesday that nearly half of the undergraduates in the spring class were under investigation for suspected cheating, for working together or for plagiarizing on a take-home final exam. Jay Harris, the dean of undergraduate education, called the episode “unprecedented in its scope and magnitude.” 

 Now my recent experience in my local Community College taking Organic Chemistry let me see this first hand. Back in the  50s and early 60s at MIT students did their own Problem Sets and on Take Home Exams it was assumed that you did the work yourself. In fact the competition was so severe you would not trust others work, and they would not trust you. Independence was essential.

But today, there is a culture of "sharing". Before each class where there was a homework due the students gathered together and compared assignments, made changes as necessary and converged to an answer. It was accepted. No, I did not participate, I was the "old guy", they were all young students. But in a Facebook generation this sharing is de rigueur, commonplace. It is the way they work. They had been taught such team work in their education process all along their young lives. It is the way we are taught today, no individual performance, we all are told to work in a group, to share. It is a cultural norm, yet life does not work quite that way.

Harvard is getting a lesson in what their liberal professors have been preaching, the loss of individualism and the ascent of groupism. Is it good or bad. Grammar schools no longer give out grades, class ranking is no longer accepted, and sharing is accepted as the way to go.

Perhaps the chickens are just coming home to roost.