LET'S TALK ABOUT ETHICS, SHALL WE...?

Our son has been driving for almost two months. In our state, the kids have to have 50 hours of driving time with parents, once they get their permit, before they can be issued their license. We kept track of the time on a sheet provided by the Secretary of State - destination, weather condition, night or day, amount of time spent driving.

As we got within a month of his birthday, we were getting a little worried that he would not have his 50 hours in. So I sat down with him and told him something like "with 30 days left until your birthday, and so many hours needed, you need to plan on driving this many minutes a day." And our son responded something like this: "If you two weren't SO ETHICAL, this wouldn't be such a problem. Do you know how many 'trips to St. Louis' R has taken, on paper, to fill his sheet up? His dad just marks the sheet and doesn't make him drive."

Seems there was a lot of that going on.

So I tried to explain that their parents were not doing them any favors, and that we needed to follow the rules so he'd be experienced and confident behind the wheel, blah, blah, blah....

Fast forward to the first week of school. Sophomore biology. The students are required to bring a paper home each Friday to have us look at their grades for the week and sign it to let the teacher know we looked at it. I thought once we were out of elementary school, I would be done signing papers, but...Well, our son forgot to have us sign his the first week and so got a zero for that assignment.

His classmates, however, also forgot to have their parents sign theirs, but signed their parents' names right there in the classroom before handing it in.

My son, the ethical one, got a zero, bringing his grade down to a C for the week. The kids who chose not to follow the directions and took the easy (and sneaky) way out, got full credit.

I have to believe the teacher knows this is going on. I cannot believe that anybody with a lick of sense and ANY experience with teenagers would not at least suspect this. Can she not see that the handwriting for the "parent's signature" looks suspiciously like that of the student? Does she not wonder about the shuffling of papers and the desperate search for pens and the hurried writing on the papers before they are handed forward?

I told our son that I was prouder of his "C" that week than I would be of an "A" because it meant he chose the ethical route. And I told him I might be having a talk with this teacher when conference time comes around.

Life is not always about taking the easy way out. I wish it could be. I wish every day of jr. high and high school could be easy for my kids. But it can't be. I wish they didn't have to learn some lessons so early.

But they do.