By Deborah Lambert

Believe it or not, today's college students have very few qualms about Internet cheating. According to The New York Times, 38 percent of students surveyed on 23 campuses admitted that during the past year, they had "engaged in one or more instances of 'cut-and-paste' plagiarism involving the Internet, paraphrasing or copying anywhere from a few sentences to a full paragraph from the Web without citing the source." Three years ago, only ten percent of students admitted to Internet cheating in a similar survey.

Dr. Donald McCabe, Rutgers University management prof and survey organizer, said that cheaters often defend their behavior by saying it's just a response to the intense competition to get into grad school, land top jobs - or the "everyone else does it" syndrome.

As for cheaters'remorse? Forget it. One student said: "If professors can't detect a paper from an Internet source, that is a flaw in the grader or professor."

When Dr. John Sexton was named president of New York University in 2002, he wasted no time in setting a bold agenda, stating that: "the research faculty at our great universities must accept that undergraduate teaching is a vital part of their vocation."

These comments were immediately hailed by critics, who complained for years that undergraduates, who need the very best teaching, usually receive the "very worst," since many big time research profs avoid teaching chores entirely.

In his determination to change the status quo, Dr. Sexton says he will "press tenured professors to spend more time with undergraduates, both inside the classroom and out…" The New York Times reports that he also plans to create new non-tenured, faculty categories that will "include 'teaching professors,' not judged by their research." These slots will be filled with highly credentialed, non-Ph.D. "cyberfaculty" members, specializing in the use of the Internet and other practical disciplines. He used this strategy before as dean of NYU's law school, where instead of taking on adjunct teachers, he hired a cadre of global law professors who taught for seven weeks a year, adding luster to the school "without the cost of professors tenured for life."

If you're wondering why so many students need remedial help in college, just take a look at their high school training. The New York Post reports that although 58 percent of NYC high school students recently failed their standardized reading tests and 62 percent flunked their math tests, only four-fifths of 1 percent of their teachers received "unsatisfactory" ratings. This means that over 99 percent of NYC teachers were deemed acceptable.

Parents are outraged at these figures, arguing that student failure means teacher failure. Principals claim that firing teachers is a time-consuming and difficult process that can take more than two years, under current union contract rules. NYC School Chancellor Joel Klein recently admitted through a spokesman that the current rating system is inadequate for measuring teacher competence, and "vowed to submit an accountability plan to deal with the imbalance."

But, since any contemplated changes must be negotiated with the United Federation of Teachers, don't hold your breath.

After the September 11th terror attacks, many believed that students would forego opportunities for overseas study in favor of staying home. Not so, according to Black Issues in Higher Education, which reported that overseas study programs actually experienced a sharp increase in applications.

At Iowa's Grinnell College, Richard Bright, director of Off-Campus Study, attributed the record number of applications for study abroad to the fact that students may not believe that home is the safest place to be. Statistics show that some students' interest in other countries was actually piqued by the terrorist threats.

Ohio University's Connie Perdreau, director of the Office of Education Abroad, offered another perspective on this issue, noting that students were not only interested in learning more about global politics and the reasons for the September 11th attacks, but "in some cases they wonder, where is Afghanistan?"

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This fall, the Florida Dept. of Education is co-sponsoring a new program called "Fresh 2 U," aimed at fighting obesity among elementary school kids by teaching them about the "benefits of munching fresh fruits and veggies."

Posters will show a boy "brandishing carrots as though they are drumsticks…a girl tossing an orange…a boy balancing a cantaloupe on his shoulder…" and school cafeterias plan to devise healthy food menus. The overall message is that "fruits and vegetables are "fun, yummy and good for you."

While healthy food advocates like Florida education commissioner Jim Horne believe that this campaign will "turn children away from French fries and toward fruits and vegetables," others believe the trend may go too far. Education researcher Lynn Stuter noted in a recent edition of NewsWithViews.com, that the state of Arkansas has already addressed the childhood obesity issue with legislation, namely House Bill, 1583, "an act to create a child health advisory committee; to coordinate statewide efforts to combat childhood obesity and related illnesses…" This bill also amends the state code to "require schools to include as part of the student report card to parents an annual body mass index percentile by age for each student."

As if parents didn't have enough trouble monitoring the negative cultural influences bombarding their children, now they need to scope out what's being taught in those so-called abstinence-based, sex-ed programs at the local public schools. If the information cited by Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation is indicative of current trends, it's time for a serious counter-attack.

Rector's piece titled "Sex-Ed or Porn 101" reveals how government-funded programs deceive parents into thinking that kids are being taught to say "no" to sex when, in fact, just the opposite is true. Rector points out that some "abstinence-based" programs contain explicit sexual messages by suggesting that kids "go on a condom hunt" or stage condom races where teams of students compete to see which one can put a condom on a dildo or cucumber and take it off. Kids are also advised to "brainstorm" on ways to be close that include "body massage, bathing together, masturbation, sensuous feeding, fantasizing, watching erotic movies and reading erotic books and magazines."

One program, called "Be Proud! Be Responsible!", suggests that kids as young as 13 should purchase condoms with their partners and "buy lots of different brands and colors. Plan a special day when you can experiment. Just talking about how you'll use all of those condoms can be a turn-on."

Dick Baker, a 52-year-old private school principal in Largo, Florida, nearly had to resign after the St. Petersburg Times disclosed that he had repeatedly taken several middle-school-aged girls (whom he called his little "princesses") on overnight jaunts to Disney World (one little "princess" took 81 trips.) Baker, known as a Disney fanatic, not only provided his young charges with Disney-like costumes but wore his own Disney pajamas, according to the Washington, D. C. City Paper's 'News of the Weird.' However, a police probe into these escapades ended up being called a "witch hunt," and no charges were filed.

Although the College Board recently reported a spike in SAT scores, informed skeptics like Diane Ravitch, NYU research education prof/author of The Language Police, urged parents and other concerned citizens to remain vigilant. While these scores admittedly demonstrate that recent strategies for improving student SAT preparation are working, Dr. Ravitch noted that The New York Times report could have provided more a more accurate framework for comparison by starting its SAT timeline in 1964 (when scores peaked) rather than just printing scores for the past ten years.

The crux of the problem is this: How can SAT scores continue to improve while academic conditions at our nation's high schools continue to deteriorate?

Nearly one-half of Maryland's high school students failed the state's newly standardized tests last spring, a fact that was so disturbing to the State Board of Education that it has again delayed making the test a graduation requirement, according to SunSpot.net. In New York, the word is that passing the Math test requirement for graduation would be close to impossible for the average student.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune reported that Superintendent of Schools Wilfredo T. Laboy had "recently failed, for the third time, the basic English-proficiency test required of state teachers," a requirement that Laboy called "stupid."