Cheating

Last Saturday we had a very manifestation in Lisbon. According to the police official there where 80.000 teachers there. According to the organization they where 100.000. Apart from the number, we have 140.000 teachers in Portugal, that was huge. They are protesting against an education reform. While i can see the need for some reforms, i must agree that the proposed one is more of the stupid laws we been making in the last years. Laws that have been destroying the future of my country.

Some years ago we the government decided that we had too little instruction (that was true) and we should increase the age after with people could leave school (that was also good). The problem is the implementation. Because they didn't wanted people in school, they just made almost mandatory that all pupils got positive grades. If a teacher said a pupils didn't knew anything, and wanted him to fail and repeat the discipline, they had to explain that to other teachers, to the parents and propose a recuperation plan for the next year. At the same time, because they needed results to show and didn't wanted to spend money, government started putting pressure on the school to pass all. So they did.

That not being enough, because they could fail if they didn't attended classes, the government also said that the parents, just by making a small piece of paper, could justify all those missed classes. Now we have a generation that don't know any and don't even go to school. This was all done to cheat statistics. Of course, now we are much better when we tell other that all pupils have at least 9 years of school. But what school?

We i was attending university i found another type of cheating that, i believe, is the genesis of this situation. And studies show that cheating in school is a major source of corruption in the professional life. Cheating in exams. I liked physics and because of that i had a very good grade in the first physics exam i made in the university. In the second i got surrounded by people that didn't bothered to study and wanted me to pass them the answers. I was so irritated whit all that i just wrote the replies in "portuguese", not "maths". Neither to say the grade i got was very bad. But that was not the worst.

Next year i had thermodynamics. I also loved the discipline. When i got to the exam i found that what we had in class was not the scope of the exam. I was intrigued. Then people told me that it was normal, we just had to study from last exams, not classes. I thought that stupid, classes are to learn and share ideas. If the exam is not about what we have learned then what was all of that about. I soon got my answer.

The second try at the exam was in a Saturday, and because i was tired (and intrigued) i didn't took it. I just went there to check it out. When my friend came out at the final of the exam they where very happy. They told me that the y cheated and copied the answer from each others and they where going to pass all. So they did. was getting more and more intrigued.

A couple of month later i went to take another shot at the exam. I had studied the last exams and i thought i was ready. I arrived and they made us sit in the middle of the hall. It was a very big entrance, with a glass ceiling and a balcony all around. They putted us all in the ground floor and there where people in the balconies controlling. It looked like a prison. Some where saying, we just do this and that and we can get with cheating, no problem. When they where handing the questions i got up and left. never went back. I don't cheat and resent that i am confounded with those.

I guess that's why we have now a prime minister that had to explain why he had a degree issued on a Sunday and, as people argued, never attended classes or exams. I guess that's why teachers are mad. They don't teach,
they just must allow cheating.