Jennifer Plesko

Just about every day at lunch, I have a routine. I eat my Lean Cuisine at my desk, and I peruse Yahoo news. Otherwise, the only place I learn about the world is through Twitter. Yeah, I know.

So today, I’m reading Dear Abby (What? That is a hard-hitting piece of human interest, people.), and there was an ongoing discussion about the level of involvement schools should have regarding students who cheat. The responses ran the gamut from “administrators have more important things to deal with” (which usually comes from administrators) to “lay the hammer down.”

Then there was this response:

DEAR ABBY: If students today were taught the value of morality by studying literature and philosophy, history and economics, they would develop a higher mind and a greater belief in their own need for a sounder character.

We are assailed on many fronts by problems that seem insurmountable and insoluble, and it’s easy to become discouraged. But so long as some of us strive to emphasize the need for honesty and instill in our young charges a sense of outrage for injustice, dishonesty and chicanery, we can avoid what earlier generations called mountebankery, humbug and fraud. — C.R. IN HOUSTON

Apparently, this topic hit home with Thomas Jefferson, and he’s come back from the grave under an assumed name to school us all. Beware.