So in case you haven't been watching the news recently, there's some big shit goin down in Kansas. A high school biology teacher in Piper, Kansas caught 28 of her students plaigerising their final projects from the internet. The school policy was to give the students a zero for the project. The school rulebook also states the rules concerning plaigerism, including what constitutes plagiarism, and is given to each student. So when the teacher discovered this, she went to the principal and showed him what she found. She had proof (printouts of web pages) where sentences and sometimes whole paragraphs of the student's projects were identical to that of the web page. He agreed with her, but called the superintendent to confirm. The superintendent agreed that the students had, in fact, plaigerised, and were to be given zeros. Since the project was half their final grade, all 28 failed the course. Cut and dried, case closed, right?

    Wrong.

    And this is where the whole thing goes screwy. The parents of the students called the school and school board in outrage that their children had failed. Even though the situation was explained to them and they were shown the school policy on plagiarism, they demanded that their precious child be given a passing grade. God forbid that their children be accountable for their actions. In closed session, the school board voted to give all 28 partial credit for the assignment, violating their own policy, and ordered the teacher to lower the value of the project to 30% of the final grade, affectively passing all students. In protest, she resigned. Now 30-50% of the remaining teachers are threatening to resign as well in protest of the school boards actions.

    </summation>
<rant>

    Ok, so these kids were given the copy of the rules concerning plagiarism at the beginning of the year, right? Every student in the country has to read and sign a rules agreement at the beginning of each year. So must their parents. And they KNEW that what they were doing was plagiarism. But now they're claiming that they didn't know that what they were doing was wrong. Wait, they didn't know that stealing someone elses work and lying about it was wrong? Are they stupid? Not yet, but they will be. What they're going to learn from this situation is that you can make it through life being lazy and copying everything from the guy next to you with no reprimandation, even if you're caught. They're going to grow up without knowing how to actually do their own work or their own research. They're going to grow up to be lazy and incompetent. And it's not their fault.

    Who's fault then? Well let's take a look at it all. They cheated. They should be punished, no? But their parents stepped in and threatened and yelled at the school board, which buckled like the Tacoma Narrows bridge. So who's fault is it? The parents' and the board.

    The parents because instead of teaching their child to be responsible for his or her actions, they are teaching them that 'it's ok to lie and cheat, we'll fix it so you don't get in trouble.' These parents, like too many others today, are incompetent. They don't teach and guide their children the way they should; instead they leave the child to fend for itself until it runs into trouble, and then they magically make the trouble go away. Where did we come up with this garbage form of parenting? No animal in nature does that, why should we? I know they love their kids and want life to be easy for them, but too fucking bad. Life's not easy. Life is toil and work. It is from toil and work that we learn to value the things we have. These people are hideously crippling their children's development, all in a misguided attempt at compassion and caring.

    Now for the board. It rolled over. It grabbed its ankles like a seasoned prison bitch. The parents complained that the school would dare have the audacity to act according to policy, and they agreed, fucking AGREED with the parents. What the fuck? A school board is a body of elected members that is designed to govern the education system of their district and enforce all policies set forth by the board. But this group of clowns apparently cares more about their own posistion and comfort than about the proper education of their constituents. The parents complained, and they immediatly gave the parents exactly what they wanted, just to shut them up. In my opinion, the entire board should be replaced.

    This situation is a disturbing portrait of the breakdown of the education system in this country. We constantly make it easier and easier to sleep your way through high school. Every year more and more students graduate high school unable to fulfill basic tasks. Many can not even read or write well enough to survive in the real world. The job of a federally funded learning institution is to prepare its students for real life, hardships included. Reading, writing, and 'rithmatic, if you will. Instead, the only lessons they teach our young is that it is completely acceptable to be irresponsible in your choices and actions. That there are no consequences. I imagine that if the government were to reform education and uphold MUCH stricter standards of education, the massive financial loss on such institutions as welfare, unemployment, and social services would be eased. Taxes would be lower. And the general intelligence of the population would increase. That is all over a period of time, of course. No governmental change is instantaeneous. However, I can't imagine the state of the education system being any worse, so maybe its time to ty something new.

    "The IQ and the life expectancy of the average american recently passed each other going in the opposite direction" - George Carlin.

    So I have three final points to make. Messages to the people involved, you could say.

    The first, to the students: Grow up. You cheated, you got caught. Deal with it. You want to pass, do your own fucking work.

    Third to the parents: Perhaps you should focus on teaching your children right from wrong, not whining about the consequences of their poor decisions.

    The second, to the teacher: Right the fuck on. You are doing the right thing. It is encouraging to see that in a country of incompetent and lax teachers that don't actually care about anything but the paycheck, at least someone is still sticking to their convictions and their responsbilites as an educator. You can come teach my children any time. I would be proud to have them taught by such a fine, mature educator.