Good business from the cradle to the grave

A crucial social problem sprung up for our generation years ago. I think it's safe to say that most, if not all, of us experienced it in our earlier years. \nWith a pencil secured in our tiny hand and a sheet of paper in front of us, we embarked on a test that would determine whether we were smart enough to continue to the next single-digit grade. And for the life of us, we could not figure out what 9 + 7 was. Some variation of the same thought crossed our minds: "Mommy's going to be so disappointed if I can't get this. These numbers are just too big. Maybe Jessica next to me knows." And so we let our sparkling pre-adolescent eyes wander to Jessica's paper and see our golden ticket. 16! I knew it! We quickly scribbled down the number and continued with the examination, "borrowing" another answer or two as we went that is until the unthinkable happened: The teacher caught sight of what we were doing.\nAnd so we spent the next hour or so in the corner, lost our gold star for the day and couldn't go to recess. Regardless of the exact nature of the punishment, it was no doubt some great affront to our infantile dignity and would earn a stern talking-to at home. \nWhat's the difference between the dark day back then and finding yourself failed out of a course or expelled from school right now? When it comes right down to it, whether it's cheating on that math test, plagiarizing for a high school research paper or concocting an elaborate text-messaging answer swap during the A100 midterm, cheating is cheating, and anyone who engages in it violates the same basic principle, regardless of the "magnitude" of the offense. \nI certainly don't mean to compare Ken Lay, formerly of Enron, with my younger cousins at St. Mary's Elementary School back home. But I do intend to point out that our culture tends to teach values on vastly different levels. We need to work harder to ingrain honesty and integrity at a very young age.\nWhen I was making my way through the pre-university education system, I was fully aware that if I wanted to cheat, I could probably get away with it, and if I couldn't, the penalties wouldn't be all that bad. We tend to take actions of less-than-perfect integrity far less seriously than we should, and I'm convinced we started feeling that way at a very young age.\nValues of ethical and honest work sometimes fall by the wayside in this day and age, and it's our responsibility -- as the next generation of parents, business students and world leaders -- to correct this flaw. Keep the little Johnnys and Susies out of the corner, and you'll keep the Kens and Jeffreys out of prison.