Posted on October 10, 2011 by Sandra Clifton

You may have missed the recent headlines from New York, but a young man was caught impersonating six different students on the SAT exam. This college student charged seniors a sum of $2,500 each in order for them to appear to have achieved a 2200/2400 on this demanding requirement for entrance to their top university.

There are many levels of transgression here, but from an educator’s perspective, it might be helpful to examine some possible root causes for this academic crime – because I believe that we’re all a bit to blame…In our society, the end result is often the only aspect of personal achievement that is applauded – and that’s a problem. Instead of recognizing individual investment and daily perseverance, we tend to focus on just that “shining moment” of accomplishment, and these particular teens obviously cracked under this pressure. They decided to cash in on the opportunity to impersonate in order to look great, rather than take a chance of sweating through this test and possibly appearing “less than capable” when compared to their peers this year.

A recent article in The New York Times, by Tara Parker-Pope, addresses this exact issue:  “School Curriculum Falls Short on Bigger Lessons“. Pope reports that experts are concerned with the skills of social and emotional intelligence like self-control, motivation, focus, and resilience (which are definitely required components of mastering the SAT) are not being emphasized, while test scores have become the most valued aspect of a student’s worth.

Perhaps this is where coaching can really come into play: A life coach doesn’t give grades or scores – the work that a client brings to each session is largely an “inside game”.  This approach of recognizing practice over performance is key to helping students re-engage in the journey of authentic investment and genuine learning. “Kids who are praised for effort, those kids learn that intelligence is something that can be built,” comments Dr. Kenneth R. Ginsberg, in adolescent medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

An old adage says that “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. Neither is an individual’s education.  The students who bent under pressure are guilty of lying and should be held accountable for academic dishonesty. But we can all learn a lesson from their mistake. As Ginsberg says, “We need to approach failure and difficulty and struggle as data that teach us what we should do with our lives.  It’s when you say to a child, ‘I expect you to do well in everything, ‘ that we’re preparing them to fail”.