A Question of Ethics

When I was a sophomore in HS, my German II-III teacher was blind. Because he was blind, the district hired an assistant for him to do things that required sight. One of these things was to check to make sure everyone did their homework. Unfortunately, she (the assistant) did not speak a word of German, so students would somewhat frequently show her something that wasn’t the assigned homework and she would mark them down as having completed the assignment. Admittedly, I did this once as well, but I regret having done that.

My question: Was that taking advantage of the fact that the teacher was blind?

Here’s my thinking - The assistant was acting as an ‘agent’ on the teacher’s behalf, so if you cheat her (IE, give her the false impression that what you showed her was the homework) then you are vicariously cheating the teacher.

No doubt in my mind. And not vicariously.

The teacher gave you the assignment. It was to him you were responsible.

30 days in the electric chair for you…

I agree - it was cheating.

However, it was rather foolish of the district to employ someone whose job included duties that she was not able to adequately fulfill - not that that excuses what you and your classmates did, just saying is all…

Grim

Ours was a pretty small district… it would have been rather impractical for them to hire someone who was more qualified to judge matters pertaining to German…

And let me state for the record, I did it once and I know it was wrong…

Although it was cheating, the school district also gets black marks for short-changing the students by not providing a method of feed-back for the assignments.

The only person that got cheated was you. You were given an opportunity to learn and you took the easy way out. The loss was only yours.

Love