Jonathan Zimmerman: Harvard Cheating Scandal? It Could be Bad Teaching.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and chairs the humanities and social services department at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory” (Yale University Press).

In 1998, a self-described con-man named Bob Corbett published an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek manifesto called “The Cheater’s Handbook: The Naughty Student’s Bible.” Boasting that he had paid someone to take his high school Advanced Placement tests, Mr. Corbett provided helpful and often hilarious hints for producing crib sheets, digging up old exams, and much more.

But he dedicated his book to his 11th grade English teacher, who “did such a wonderfully engaging job that he destroyed any shred of desire I may ever have had to cheat in English thereafter,” Corbett wrote. “If all teachers brought such passionate energy to their classrooms,” he added, “perhaps this book would become obsolete.”

I thought of Corbett as I read about the cheating scandal at Harvard, where almost half of the 279 students in a course last spring are under investigation for allegedly collaborating on a take-home final exam. Trying to explain the episode, news reports and commentaries named the usual suspects: crazy-competitive college admissions have made students even more grade-conscious, the internet has made it easier for them to cut and paste, and universities have stopped trying to instruct them about what’s right and wrong....