A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.
George Orwell, “The Prevention of Literature,” Polemic (January 1946).
On November 30, 1782, representatives from the United States and Great Britain signed preliminary peace articles, drafted in Paris, France. These were later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the percentage of students at one college who admit cheating has jumped “from 35 percent in 2019 to 65 percent in 2024.” This school is not an outlier.
Teachers can see how bad it’s gotten. One professor emailed a student caught using ChatGPT to write a paper to warn that she would fail the course if she did it again. The student replied with a heartfelt apology but soon did it again. It turned out that the apology itself had been spewed by ChatGPT.
How to combat the trend?
There are many ways if one is serious about it. Detecting prose that is ChatGPT-spawned is usually not hard. But if students suffer no real costs for cheating, as is often the case, cheating will only remain routine.
“Researchers have long documented that many students cheat at some point in their educational career,” the author of the Chronicle article explains, “and that their motivations are situational rather than character based.”
Talk of motivations is off-point. Students’ actions are “situational”-based in terms of incentives. Students come in a wide range of character, I hazard, each individual’s integrity built up by a long string of past decisions, which were, undoubtedly, influenced by incentives. When strict honesty is not taught and rewarded, and gross dishonesty not condemned and punished (with bad grades or expulsion), then even students with strong character will be tempted to cheat, and weaker students will cheat.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Midjourney
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Sure, politics ain’t bean-bag. ’Tis a man’s game, an’ women, childer, cripples an’ prohybitionists ’d do well to keep out iv it.
Finley Peter Dunne writing as “Mr. Dooley,” Chicago Evening Post, October 5, 1895.
On November 29, 1963, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson established, with Executive Order 11130, the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He named the following men to head the research panel:
Note that one of these men had been fired by the assassinated president as Director of the CIA, and hated JFK’s guts, while another went on to become the only president of the United States to enter office having received no votes in the Electoral College, or any popular votes on a federal-level ticket.
2009: “Paul Jacob says ‘Thank You.’”
2011: “Plymouth’s Great Reform”
2012: “A Rafter of Turkeys”
2013: “Give Thanks for First World Problems”
2016: “Thanksgivings, 1623 A.D.”
2017: “Ingrates of the Fourth Estate”
2018: “My thanksgiving is perpetual.”
2020: “The Saddest Thanksgiving”
2023: “One by One”
Time was when people used to brag about how old they were — and I am old enough to remember it.
Thomas Sowell, “Random Thoughts,” from his Creators Syndicate column.
On November 28, 1893, women voted for the first time in New Zealand’s parliamentary election.
We’ve always known that Donald Trump doesn’t advocate 100 percent laissez faire capitalism. As if to confirm his inconsistencies and disabuse us of any hopes of clear sailing toward greater freedom, or even toward keeping the freedom we’ve got, he has named Republican Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer as his Secretary of Labor.
Labor-union darling DeRemer supports the Pro Act: anti-worker, anti-freelancer legislation that was barely blocked in Congress and that the current Labor Department has tried to impose by regulation. I doubt the incoming Congress will enact it either. But if DeRemer is Labor Secretary she, too, may try to impose it by regulation.
The Pro Act would kill laws in 26 states that let workers choose whether to join a union. There’s a novel concept, letting employees decide whether to join an organization supposedly devoted to their interests.
The Pro Act would also undermine the secrecy of the ballot in union elections. A secret ballot is a fundamental tenet of our democratic republic.
Worst of all, at least for gig workers and freelancers, are its provisions to make life much harder to function as an independent contractor.
Unions that favor the Pro Act, and Mrs. DeRemer, are eager to do all they can to cripple the ability of non-unionized labor to compete with above-market-rate union labor.
This isn’t just a No, Mr. President.
It is, as Jennifer O’Connell puts it, a “Hell No.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Midjourney
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Nature never makes blunders; when she makes a fool she means it.
Affurisms. From Josh Billings: His Sayings (1865).