As Steve Brown indicates, this is a nightmare for a Head which most of us have had to handle over time.
Allow me to provide how we actually have handled such challenges at New Community Jewish High School (de Toledo High School as of July 1, 2015).
First, the research for the Josephson Institute of Ethics based in Los Angeles indicates that perhaps 70% of high school students have cheated to a greater or lesser degree during their high school careers. This might involve from copying someone else’s homework assignment to the lifting of an entire term paper from the Internet. Both are cheating, but the degree is quite different.
Second, at NCJHS, expulsion for such a one or even two-time incidence of cheating would never be on the table. It would not matter who knew about it. Our value system and our understanding that the human brain is not fully developed until the age of 25 in the area of judgment-making mitigates against anything that even resembles expulsion. Moreover, our value system sees such an event as an educational opportunity to teach about the long-term consequences of “cheating†in the “real world,†and also allows a child to exercise the Jewish process of teshuvah. The teshuvah process would be created within a full discussion with the students, his/her parents, and our school’s grade-level dean and principal. The Head is not involved unless it involves an expulsion, which, as indicated above, it would not.
Third, our school’s policy is that any incidence of cheating in grades 11 or 12 must be reported to the colleges to which a student has applied. This consequence, in the minds of parents and students, is exceptionally severe. Everyone knows far in advance that this is what will happen, and it does. Both the child and the school report; the child provides a full explanation to the college for his/her actions. What is most interesting, however, is that a student’s admission to a college has never been revoked due to this reporting. The colleges often comment that the teshuvah process we require of the students shows integrity on the part of the school and the student. The colleges appreciate our honesty and thereby tend to trust all of our reporting, i.e. transcripts, letters, etc., even more so.
Fourth, the in-house consequence is pretty simple: the student receives a “zero†on the assignment and that grade is averaged in to his/her final grade for the course. This often results in a student losing one full grade point in that course, i.e. an A to a B, B to a C, etc. If a child is cheating by helping another child, my sense is that is still construed as cheating and the consequences remain across the board.
Finally, the reality of all such situations is very individual. Our school’s ethos involves “one mind at a time,†and we see no inconsistency in having one student receive consequence X while another gets consequence Y. Our culture understands that this may happen, albeit infrequently; however, there can be so many other contexts for a child that one must consider all scenarios.
As with most things in life, there is no black and white, only a massive amount of grey.
The final question God asks of us when we pass from this world is “Did you understand a big thing from a small thing?†The Head’s job is to figure this out and make the right ethical call for that child, for that moment, causing the least harm and doing the most good, until 120.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2016 07:02PM by mlb.
