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Current Issue: Volume 35, Issue No. 3, Week of March 22, 2009
Previous Issue: Volume 35, Issue No. 2 Week of February 22, 2009

 

I Think We Need to Talk

Clyfford Says We need to Talk

Talk to Each Other

 

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: March 22, 2009
Latest Update: March 22, 2009
E-Mail Icon jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Topic of the Week:

I Think We Need to Talk

  • Introduction

    One of the dangers in the world today is that in the midst of frustration, fear, and justifiable anger, we have begun to shout at each other. As Albert O. Hirschman described in the Reagan era, in The Rhetoric of Reaction, this ain't gonna cut it, folks. Sure, we're angry with justification. They robbed us. But who's the "they"? Sure, if we're not the 3% of folks with all the money, we know that we're the ones who got robbed. But did that top 3% do it to us. Hardly. They don't even know me. They probably don't even know you.

    In sociology and economics, we call it "trickle down." But I'm afraid it's not the money and the good stuff that trickled down this time. It's the attitude of entitlement, and of almost total disregard of those whose shoulders we climb on to get to those privileged entitlements. And, yikes, did that ever trickle down effectively.

    Why do I suspect that the person in my 1985 law class at UCLA who removed (I hate to say "stole" of a UCLA lawyer-to-be; after all, I "are" one.) the copies of a law book essential to an assignment many of us needed to complete, never thought that such behavior might bring down our country's economic system one day. Of course, on our way to "thinking like lawyers," we learned all about foreseeable consequences. But, of course, you couldn't practically go all the way back to "first causes." Get real!

    Well, I think I am being reasonable and "real" when I look at financial experts, accountants, lawyers, and economists, all of whom played integral roles in bringing our global economy to its knees. Not all of them; of course not. Most of them, like the most of us in UCLA's law class of 1985, took our fiduciary and ethical responsibilities seriously. But then, how did those copies of the book we needed disappear not only from our library, but also from the faculty library, and from several other libraries that might have provided the case that had disappeared?

    It wasn't so hard really. My husband's firm had the case in it's library. But what about those who didn't happen to have access to alternative sources, like a husband who practiced law? Or the mobility of a car at hand to take you to a more distant library? The skullduggery wasn't completely disabling. It just made the case harder to find and meant that most of us lost critical time checking out alternative sources. Time, in a highly competitive world, matters. Law schools and business schools, and law firms, and financial enterprises are highly competitive worlds. But what can you do to circumvent the skullduggery? Waste more time sleuthing about to locate the vile culprit? That's counter-productive. Most of us aren't trained investigators, and even trained investigators are hampered by a lumbering enforcement system. And then there's the "proportional response" dilemma. Even though we might have "liked to kill" the little "cheater," such lust for retribution could hardly have produced a "proportional response."

    Because I'd been a teacher for so many years, I'd long ago learned that students couldn't cheat if the teacher made sure the resources were available to all. Simple. I xeroxed the case - 80 copies - and passed them out to my classmates. Well, actually, given that I was teaching all the while, I'll bet I gave the case to my husband's secretary and had her (yes, most of them then were "her"s) xerox and collate them.

    Usually when people cheat, they don't have what it takes to stand on their own two feet, or brain parts (right and left). I don't really care who the cheater was. Except now, so many years later, I wonder if the cheater managed to pass the bar and practiced law the same way he/she got through that assignment. Cheating matters. But to the extent that it really matters, it mostly matters in the ideology it leads us to live by. We need to stop setting up situations in which cheating suggests a plausible solution.

    More soon. . . . jeanne

  • Discussion Questions

    1. How do we set up situations in which cheating suggests a plausible solution?

      Consider testing situations designed for automatic correction, which means that the answer itself is all that is considered. If the cheater can obtain the answer, cheating becomes one plausible way to get a good grade. Consider the extent to which the issue of cheating has become such an issue that professors in college are often instructed to include punishments for cheating on college syllabi. That's almost like suggesting one plausible alternative to those students who might then spend as much effort to not get caught as they would otherwise spend to actually learn the material. jeanne

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