by T.C Leonard

Created on: July 27, 2008   Last Updated: February 23, 2009

Academic dishonesty comes in many forms. Accusations fly, and even the great Martin Luther King, Jr. has come under scrutiny for allegedly cheating on his way to his doctorate. In the twenty-first century, it's very easy to cheat; cutting and pasting is a good example. It must also be said that Google has made it easier than ever to catch a cheater. People steal ideas and quotes all of the time, but Cliff's Notes aren't really all that quotable and merely serve as a means of not reading a piece of literature. If a student follows all of the other rules, reading these little black and yellow gems only leads to him to cheat himself out of the experience of reading a classic.

I have never used Cliff's Notes and have only one experience with them. I was in a graduate class with a young lady who hadn't read a 600+ page novel, and a 15 page paper on the book was due in two days. Her lack of interest in the book reduced her to tears because there was no hope in reading it as the deadline drew near. I ran out to the campus bookstore and bought the Cliff's Notes version, and after reading through it she came up with a couple of ideas. I really didn't have much hope for her, but in academia fact is often stranger than fiction. Here's what happened...

When combined with a way with words, a gift for gab, and a good line of BS, the notes launched a beautiful fifteen page essay that drew rave reviews from the prof. In fact, her grade was better than mine, AND I did read the book. I don't see anything particularly dishonest about it. It's one thing to get ready for a multiple choice test by reading these notes, but it's quite another to write a graduate level essay that scores an "A" based upon a shortcut! The last I heard, she was a professional educator. Me? I took a job as a mail man in order to make ends meet. Cream has a tendancy to rise to the top no matter what the situation may be.

Let's face it, even the best lawyers don't read their Blackstone from cover-to-cover. It's all about finding specific cases in the index and circumnavigating a load of work. In the real world, most people hit the highlights and have some version of Cliff's Notes that aid them in getting from Point A to Point B on the job. It's simply a fact of life. I have a pretty good idea that most professors look down their noses at Cliff's Notes, but nobody has successfully removed them from the endcaps in every college bookstore in the nation. In fact, most English professors probably know an unsuccessful classmate who has written a pamphlet or two about Shakespeare's plays or Twain's novels. It's a fast-paced world, and reading every page of every text makes for a long climb to the top.

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