"Helping" is not necessarily a bad thing: 
2/11/2013 home written stream of consciousness

Late last night, I read the chapter on “Helping” in Jim Cooper’s book on his personal experiences at the UPR at Mayaguez. I really did find some of this text funny, even though in my opinion it was not written with a humorous connotation, some of the things Cooper mentioned drew a giggle or two. What Cooper establishes in the text is that some of the students that took class in the English program helped each other with assignments and even tests, because they simply had the urge to help their friends. The students kindly didn’t want their friends or relatives to fail, so they provided a little bit of help. The way in which Cooper writes this chapter is not offensive, it just emphasizes how innocent or maybe how naïve some of the students were at the moment. They genuinely didn’t understand the classroom rules, and no matter how many times the professor tried to explain, the students still didn’t understand. The thing is, the students didn’t really see what they were doing as cheating; they were simply helping their classmates to do better in the assessments.      

In my opinion this isn’t such a bad thing to do. Of course, nowadays things have changed a bit, technology and mass media make it a bit easier to learn things, at least language wise. Also, plagiarism rules and academic dishonesty are a BIG deal. I personally can’t cheat on an exam, never have and most likely never will, due to the simple fact that I don’t want to risk all the effort and expenses that my parents have put into my education for one simple test. I would rather fail with dignity than copy on an exam, get caught, get expelled, and never get a chance to reach my goals. Even if my parents hadn’t put in the effort and the money, honesty is still a crucial value for me. However, at the specific time that the story was taking place there was a much greater deficiency in the English language on the island. This was a good way for students that actually knew English to practice, while at the same time spreading their knowledge to their peers.  

When one reflects on the current situation there really isn’t much of a difference in the education system. The government seems to be indifferent in terms of education, because some public high schools have a horrible ESL program. There are a few exceptions though, I personally took the College Board in a public school, and a lot of the students that went there not only knew English, but a lot of them were really nice and welcoming, very different than past experiences that I’ve had when going to public schools. The system definitely needs a radical change, education wise, but that’s not going to happen until there is a collective radical change in Puerto Rican society.