Has Technology Changed Kids' Sense of Right and Wrong?

Seriously, in what pretented perfect world are we living? Have we forgotten that most of us did cheat at school at one or the other stage? Have we forgotten how many times our little notes were useless because we knew exactly what was written on them? What really gets to me though, is that you link cheating with a lack of ethical values and that you pretend the latter will have consequences in the pupils life. What are you trying to tell us? That the repercussion of cheating might twist the kids to real hustlers or criminals? Oh, I know now why our prisons are crowded, thank you for making this clear! In pragmatic terms I don’t think that the new technologies really alleviate cheating dramatically. Little saved notes in the cell phone just replace the notes on a little piece of paper or in the palm of the hand. Digital messages to an accomplice just replace the hand signs we used to make to our class mates as soon as the teacher turned his back. I don’t even agree when the study stipulates that the accessibility to already written essays via the internet is much easier than in the past. Let’s face the truth, teachers are most of the time lazy. They repeat their lessons in exact the same way and structure as they did over and over again through the past years. They don’t change or adapt their documents and constantly distribute the same old papers. In terms of tests or exams the same applies; over and over again they ask the same questions throughout the generations. I can’t remember how many times, I or one of my friends went to the one year older generation and asked them for their exams and essays of the previous year. And exactly like with the internet today, we paid 1-5 bucks for it depending on the degree of difficulty. So what’s the difference between yesterday and today? The study reports that there is no grey zone in terms of cheating. Either the kids are open for swindle or they aren’t. Again, I can’t subscribe to this point of view, in general I think that the majority of the kids would cheat if they had the guts to do so, independently of their sense for ethics. By all means, kids constantly try to push their limits as far as possible, in each individual case, evaluating their odds to be caught against the potential profit. When adults do that they just and simply call it risk assessment & management. At last you ask the parents to educate their kids how to use these new technologies and especially how NOT to use them. Wow, that’s a real great advice! Let me make a short and non exhaustive list of what I or my parents already told our children NOT to do, but they did howsoever: - Not to smoke - Not to swear - Not to drink or take drugs - Not to steal, cheat or lie I can assure you that I do control all these points whilst being in the presence of my children and I’m sure that you do too, but how the hell do you think we should monitor these misbehaviours while they’re at school?! Isn’t it their (school) responsibility or did I misunderstand something? Finally let me just say that instead of teaching only hard facts – i.e. when did Columbus discover America – and claim that our children suffer from a lack of ethical values, you should rather teach them real ethical values like “how to live in peace and acceptance with our fellow men”. The latter is astonishingly only taught in church, not so at school though!