The Years Teach Much Which the Days Never Knew

In the dim light of Senator Jack Martins' recent letters to the editors in some local Long Island papers filled with ironic criticisms about sitting on a committee based on the recent SAT cheating scandal, I have come to the realization that I am old.

I realize that for most, old age comes at a very inconvenient time. My kids say I’m actually so old that I fart dust. They also say that taking my Lipitor after my dinner of franks and beans has recently been classified as “Weapons of Mass Destruction” according to the Geneva Convention. I am old enough to use the term “Geneva Convention” in a joke, instead of the more modern terms of “UN Regulations Committee” or “The Department of Homeland Security.”

You see, I was there* in 1974 when the New York Board of Regents cancelled seven different exams because the answer keys were stolen to seven different exams and being sold by students all over NY for approximately $2,000 so they could cheat. (* When I say I was there I mean figuratively, not literally, just in case you work for the FBI). I was also there in 1989, when the Board of Regents cancelled state exams because the NY Post printed the answer key to two different state exams, because cheating students stole the answer keys and sold one to the child of a reporter.

Now I have to say that I am considered old by many, wizened by few, but not as ancient as some. I have a laminated AARP card that I carry, but I am not retired. I don’t yet qualify for a McDonald’s Senior Citizen discount, but I have a pet squirrel that I have fed at the house for decades that is so old, he has no idea where his nuts are. And I also remember an important 2002 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, that the Educational Testing Services Committee informed graduate schools in the U.S. that China, South Korea and Taiwan are all suspected of producing over 1,000 GRE scores for students who cheated on the tests to get into U.S. Colleges and Universities.

I feel aged and weathered and my idea of a great military campaign is the one of “The Trojan Piñata”. I am educated enough to know that resistance is NOT futile...it is voltage divide by current. Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk. I have been around long enough to know that if an elected official thinks that cheating on state-mandated exams is new, that they are spending way too much time in with their head buried in the sand.

There is even a TV series based on a true story, about a guy who works for a law firm after he helped others cheat their way through the bar exam. One has to just flick their remote to C-SPAN and watch the senate committee hearings reconfiguring the “No Child Left Behind Act” to see that you can punch holes in the new proposals with a refrigerator.

Nevertheless, my calendar is so old that after Monday and Tuesday it clearly says WTF. And I feel that when life gives you melons, I feel you should get tested for Dyslexia. But my super smart wife, who is still a princess right down to her glass flip-flops and enchanted sweatpants, would tell me that I would be seriously remiss that if I did not clearly state the eleventh commandment- “Thou shall Not CHEAT!”

Cheating is bad, wrong and evil with a capitol E. But as long as senators and congress people and presidents want to micro-manage our education system, institute mandatory countrywide policies and cut educational funding and dangle carrots with dollars based to test score results, the eventual outcome will be a more pronounced effect than those that have cone to pass. And as history tells us that no matter what security measures are taken, those desperate enough to succeed will find a way to beat the system. And in this particular case, the politicians have no one to blame for the desperation that ensues but themselves.

It just proves the adage that is as old as I, that a wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a simpleton can from a mountaintop.