Almost Newsday Tuesday

The triumphant return of Newsday was going to cover West Potomac's recent decision to let cheaters retake tests, following closely on the heels of the decision to more closely emulate child sports (where everyone gets a paper plate award and no one is special) by replacing F's with Incompletes on report cards. However, I was robbed of this material by the principal's decision to reverse both policies. Once again common sense gets in the way of humour.

I'm not surprised at the reports of inexorably increasing levels of cheating in schools. Many of the average students I've gone to school with or taught over the years couldn't think their way out of a mime's box, and Internet searches from desperate musicians trying to cheat their way through MacGamut or Practica Musica for basic ear-training assignments continues to be the number one way that new visitors reach this site.

If I ever have enough contiguous free time, my goal is to open up an Internet content mill filled with all sorts of incorrect, yet correctly cited, research, which I can then observe as it propogates through student papers. Then, far in the future when there are flux capacitors, my incorrect research will be the germinating seed of some history textbook in Texas.