Nation of Wimps

I once had a student turn in an essay that I could tell wasn’t his. I brought formal plagiarism charges against him, but they were dropped… because his mother wrote a note.

The entire incident was frustrating, but I also had a sense that it was very, very sad. Here was a young man, away from home for the first time, who made a mistake. Rather than learning something from the whole incident, rather than becoming a better student and a more responsible person, this particular young man learned nothing.

I’d heard of helicopter parents. They’re a pop culture phenomenon, but they’re also a very real problem.

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