In September, I was interviewed by a Colorado reporter about the cheating scandals at the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. It sounded like the issue was the use of informants within the ranks of the Academy to catch cheating. It turned out to be more than that (more than just catching cheating), but I did a bit of research on the Academy and cheating scandals that have rocked it in the past. The news story has now been published, and I've shared the link in the latest post, above.
While I sympathize with
instructors at the Academy, who have endured some embarrassing discoveries of
widespread academic dishonesty (in 2007, fifteen cadets were expelled for
cheating and three others resigned, and in 2004, something similar had
occurred--USA Today, "15 booted
from Air Force Academy for cheating," 5/1/2007), I have to say that if it
was entertaining the idea of planting spies in order to catch cheaters, this
would do nothing but harm to the military's desire to implant a sense of honor
in young cadets. Honor codes are held together by shared values and a sense of
trust with other members in your community--trust that you all have
internalized the honor code, and so what one cadet says to another is presumed
to be the truth and reflective of that shared sense of honor. The honor code at the Academy reads, "We will not lie,
steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does." An honorable cadet is one who says "I will not cheat
because that is not who I am, and my sense of honor will not allow it."
Once spies are planted, fear has supplanted a sense of honor in the task of
keeping people in line. Fear of punishment is fear of some externally imposed
sanction, whereas fear of shame is what keeps honorable men and women in line,
and shame is internal (though as we'll see it has an external corollary). We should certainly know by now, just from
observing the lack of integrity and dishonesty that often flourishes in our
society as a whole, that once internal control is lost, there are not enough
laws, regulators, counselors, clergymen, investigators and policemen in the
country to keep people in check. The Air Force Academy would be making a
mistake if it thought that upping the ante on catching cheaters was the way to
reinforce the honor code. Rather, they need to work hard to mold these young
men into people who care about their personal honor, men for whom such low
activity would be shameful to them regardless of whether they were caught.
The external dimension of
honor is the honoring and shaming done by a community whose members have
internalized a code of honor. Honoring and shaming are public actions taken by
these members to either praise or blame the actions of members of the
community. In a community like the Air Force Academy, cadets would not be
honored for doing what is expected in the honor code (a frequent mistake modern
educators make) but for doing some extraordinary deed like helping someone in
need, rescuing someone, being the best at some academic or military skill.
Shaming would come into play when someone was caught cheating, and would not
entail a quiet dismissal from the academy but a public airing of the misdeeds
such that no one in the Academy (or beyond its doors, which is even more of a
sanction) would want to associate with this person. The sanction of shaming
involves the loss of membership in the community, including the loss of help of
your fellow members, and it leaves a lasting and somewhat insurmountable scar
on the person's public record.
Honoring and shaming does no good, however, if
most members of a community do not take the code of honor seriously because
they have not really internalized it. For instance, if one individual calls out
another for cheating and has proof, and other members (if pressed) publicly
agree, but do not go on to shun the offender so that he or she can no longer
meaningfully participate in the community, then the sanction has the opposite
effect of looking like hypocrisy and encouraging a jaundiced view on the part
of would-be cheaters.
The somewhat unattractive
aspect of honor is the public side of honoring and shaming. Such community
behavior goes against our deeply ingrained sense of individualism, privacy, and
equality. On the one hand, honoring excellence clashes with our liberal love of
equality, which tends toward not wanting anyone to stand out too much or have a
valid claim of superiority over anyone else. On the other hand, shaming seems
to many people to violate individual rights (perhaps our right to perfect
autonomy) and especially the right to privacy, as if the act of cheating on an
exam is a purely private act that should not have any bearing on a person's
public reputation.
But
past Air Force Academy cheating scandals illustrate only too well why, though
we live in a liberal society that cherishes individual rights, freedom, and
equality (and we want to keep all of that), we need an honor code upon which
society can agree. No amount of spying and sanctions, including expulsion,
would handle what is essentially a character problem with some cadets.
Extrapolating, no amount of fines, penalties and punishments will come close to
mitigating the impact of what are in essence character problems in the general population.
If self-control does not come from within, and this condition affects too much
of the population, it will be an insurmountable task to impose self-control
from without.
