What are exams for?
A passage in the Bible reads, “Who can be trusted in small things, can be trusted in big things.”
Reality check! There is corruption in most of our leaders—the politicians, the church leaders, businessmen, and surprisingly the educators? There’s no need to doubt.
This is no magic trick that happens in a single flick. If great things should start from small beginnings, then the corrupt practices of a particular leader were, little by little, already had even before he stepped in the ladder for his office.
This makes up an equation: The opposing end of the thread, honesty, which is less familiar than its adversary, should and must have have been taught to the children in their respective homes by their
parents and in schools by their
teachers. “What you are now is what you will be in the future.”
This is because children when they are not sought after and raised properly, it is always the parents and the teachers who are likely to be put to blame. Thus we ask—how did the parents and teachers teach their children honesty?
If you just recall your elementary school years, you would quite well remember the way exams were handled, particularly the ones that involved ranking the teachers. This is not a sad story, because it has been there for years...it’s history. To be at the top of the competition is so risky that teachers would bargain values like honesty and love for learning over malicious deeds, that of allowing (or encouraging) their students to cheat during exams. They (students)cannot help but cheat; otherwise, the teachers might fall short of their being “competent teachers”, so to speak. Eventually and unknowingly, this would create an unhealthy environment towards the children.
The children themselves are forced to asked, “Why teach honesty and practice the other way around?” I, myself, am forced to ask you, “Why teach us to be honest and at the same time teach us how to be cheaters?”
We must stop this sub-culture of dishonesty. For if not, chances are, we will be the ones to become future corrupt officials, leaders, teachers................... And we don’t want that to happen, do we?
No, George Orwell was wrong when he claimed, “The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.”
I can be intelligent and honest at the same time. I can refrain from cheating and yet get good grades; refraining from cheating is itself, a sign of my intelligence.
I pray, that God will always continue to teach us, in His own way or another, to love how to learn, and to learn how to love, so we may get closer to Him, the true source of knowledge and honesty, and He to get closer to us in out hearts.
Ireneo Orio III