Cheating At Any Age

Last week, while the in-laws were in town for Jon's birthday and we were bracing ourselves for the barrage of after school homework, I got a call from Angie's science teacher. Yep, if you muttered "Uh-oh" under your breath you were right. She was very nice and matter of fact (contrary to all of Angie's claims that she's basically a goon) when she told me that Angie had cheated on her science test. No, not glancing at her neighbor's paper, but you know, just using a study guide. Subtle. 

My alarm has been rising consistently as she's begun to venture beyond the "normal" mischief Jon and I remember from our childhood. The week before when she flipped us the bird for the first time, I asked Jon if he'd still be alive if he'd tried such a thing in his house. And I definitely don't remember my parents getting a call from my teachers about cheating. Probably partly because if I ever did commit such a crime, I likely wasn't as blatant about it. But what I also recognized in the aftermath of the call when we asked Angie why she cheated, and she said like it was the most obvious thing in the world, "because I didn't know the answers," was that I never had nearly the temptation to cheat that she must fight all the time.

From the stories about her peers and their homework habits, and Jon's recounting of the Open House he attended while I was out of town, where pretty much no other parents from Angie's classes bothered to show up, I gather that maybe she's not surrounded by the most hardworking, motivated, or responsible classmates. The teacher herself mentioned that other kids were cheating on the same test. But my real empathy comes from knowing that Angie likely goes into most tests and assignments in a state of confusion and (no matter how much we prepare) unpreparedness that I never experienced.

Then, yesterday, God granted me a further glimpse into her reality. Wednesday is the day we pray that Angie's homework load is lighter than two hours, since we have small group in the evening. Instead she came home with a normal-sized assignment that I could manage, albeit with slight incredulity that she has no textbook or even notes to use for finding the answers, but is just expected to Google all the information. The whopper, however, was the 5-paragraph essay she was expected to write on her own personal culture, with a nod to how one's culture affects their perspective on life, etc.

After struggling to get the truth about when she really found out about this paper and where were all the parts she was supposed to have already written, I vented about the preposterousness of such a task. And then I texted Jon, only half-jokingly, "Would you think less of me if I wrote Angie's essay for her?" I reasoned that I could pull out my hair for roughly 3-6 hours dictating how to spell every word, and correcting each attempt at sentence structure, after not-so gently leading her toward each thought to make up those sentences. Or I could spend ~20 minutes typing up 5 paragraphs (5 sentences each!) with plenty of spelling and grammatical errors (that would have been the hardest part), and we could get on with our lives. Of course I would get Angie's input about what she wanted to say and all, but come on teachers, really?! All the other parents are writing these too, right?  Oh, it was so tempting...

And in that instant I was, again, for the zillionth time, reminded not to judge. Why can I not remember this one simple lesson, without constant examples in my own life. Someday, I pray I'll have enough experience, wisdom, humility, and understanding to react with grace instead of judgment when I get those calls, or that finger, or that look and tone of voice (you know the ones I'm talking about). But until then, I've thrown Angie under the bus a bit here, in case any of you are in the same boat and need that gentle reminder that we're all just playing the cards we're dealt, and some of us have been given a better hand than others.

But for the grace of God go I...