A mainstream newspaper reported on the firing of
a university student newspaper editor for plagiarism. The situation was
newsworthy, but when the information was released the former editor was not
named. The adviser for the students said, “We just felt like college is a time
to make a mistake, not have to pay for it for the rest of your life.” Really? Extended
plagiarism is not simply a mistake, or an accident – it’s deliberate. The issue
that really caught my attention was the advisor giving the university student a
moral pass that seems more age appropriate for the elementary or middle school
student. Paul reminds us, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought
like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways
behind me.” (1 Cor 13:11 NIV)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Everybody lies. I’m most always a bit ambivalent about using superlatives. But not about this. I don’t know if we’re taught to believe it, or if we’ve all just noticed it, but I’ve only heard one person argue against it. And every psychologist I’ve read who has touched the topic has stated it. And the two whose books about deception I’ve read both proclaimed that every psychologist makes the same observation - everybody lies. The Bible agrees, “Let God be true though every man be false.” (Rom 3:4)
-----It is difficult to live in a world like this. I don’t believe everyone outright and willingly lies according to careful strategies. I do believe that some people are so consciously careful to always state the truth that they will tell their wives her favorite dress makes her butt look not just really big, but badly out of shape to boot. A few wives will even be very grateful to hear it, being honest enough to dump the dress and keep the husband.
-----Where did her attachment to the dress come from in the first place? Why would she have ever played favorite to a dress that caused laughter in her trails? Bringing the mind into conformity with the realities around you is a big task indeed. The immensity of details about even the simplest situation is amazing. And some of the most minute details can be the most profound. Change the formula of an insulating foam just a bit, and then watch the Challenger re-enter the atmosphere like a sparkler. Touch off the Columbia like a bottle rocket if you don’t pay attention to a couple degrees of cold! Which detail matters today?
-----One likely to matter is that you fork a piece of beef or chicken or something else nutritious into your tummy at least a couple times. And then, seeing it’s been below freezing outside the past few nights, dressing warm becomes an important detail, too, maybe even more so than any laughter poor dressing may cause. The point is, whether or not you’ve come to know all the details of a situation, or whether or not you’ve come to know truthfully the ones about which you’ve merely been able to guess, you often must formulate a belief about something in order to proceed with an important objective.
-----As amazing as is the immensity of details about even simple things are the volumes of beliefs we each form from only partial knowledge because conclusions are needed asap. Thus our acting upon incomplete knowledge as if complete, even our thinking upon incomplete knowledge the same, is a form of deceit.
-----Our world is building more and more and more and more very important socially shared mental frameworks out of such deceit and worse. I was shocked, until this past year, at the enormity of deceit being deliberately infused into cultural mindsets. This student editor is also an individual. You are correct about adolescence being the place for moral ambivalence and college being the place for practicing maturity. But sometimes we have to help find each other when the other really does have inner fiber for becoming socially mature. All too often the immature currents and eddies and splashing of today’s societies washes good people up against really bad rocks.
-----A newspaper article isn’t going to evaluate whether a good person was caught being careless, or a careless person was caught being crafty. The student adviser’s statement could reflect either way. We lack details to really know. You might be right.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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