Teachers Cheat!! Sumo Wrestlers can be dishonest!! Are you kidding me?
The first chapter of the book "Freakonomics" shows that cheating exists in the most unlikely places. Who would have thought teachers would be among people that need to be supervised in order to prevent cheating and fight corruption in our society. After all, teachers are supposed to be role models. They are supposed to teach kids morality, integrity, and self discipline. No wonder our school system has been getting worse these past couple of years. Even worst, the level of cheating that exists in our school system (according to the book) is shockingly beyond what one can imagine.
Furthermore, this author’s conclusion reveals the power of incentive. Who would have thought a sport such as Sumo wrestling could be corrupted by dishonest cheaters. Sumo wrestling sport is a national pride for Japanese. On the surface, Sumo wrestlers make it seem like pride is everything. Don't be fool. The statistics in the book has revealed that behind the curtain, some of them are involved deceitfully in match arrangements. This goes to show that with the right incentive in place, corruptions can exist anywhere.
Similarly the war on drug will never be won so long as the demand curve stays positive. The demand for drug is what’s keeping the price of drugs so high; thus keeping the incentive to sell drugs alive. The incentive to take part into detrimental activities is providing an external motive to people. As a society, we have to fight this motive to do evil by encouraging intrinsic motives to do good. Let’s inspire people to do what’s right instead of cohesive means to force them to do what they want. The war on drug should be a psychological one, instead wasting police resources to pointless fights.
3 comments:
Greed is a powerful influence on any profession, as we have seen from the examples and statistics shown in the book. I was shocked like you at first, but nowadays I know I can expect anything. I remember seeing an article about a top sumo wrestler who was questioned about corrupt practices before I read freakonomics. Here is the link, http://www.cnn.com/2007/SPORT/08/15/sumo.mongolian.ap/index.html?eref=rss_latest. It is a shame to know that no matter how much respect and honor is built into a sport or institution a human can always fail to live up to the standards because we can be blinded by the "easy way out."
I couldn't believe that there would be cheating in our school system either. However like you said it does say a lot about what is currently happening when kids take the SATs to get into college. These kids simply slide through the cracks and the teachers don't care so long as they get their bonus(that is paid upon class performance).
It's hard for me to picture all teachers as role models simply because it's not often the best people in the job. I always got the impression that a lot of people just settled for being a teacher. Also, the low pay teachers receive for what is arguably one of the most important jobs around turns a lot of people away from the profession because they don't want to make $28k a year. Teaching is the kind of job you really need to have a passion for and not everyone has that. I think if teachers earned more across the board then there would be an increase in the number of applicants to the field.
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