Cheating class brings more success than playing by rules

They say a liberal arts education teaches you how to think.

A quality liberal arts education engages students and gives them a well-rounded way of thinking. Here at St. Edward’s University, we certainly get a quality education, but there is one area that is seriously lacking in our curriculum.

Of course I am talking about the art of cheating. St. Edward’s, if they are to truly prepare us for the real world, needs to offer a class on cheating.

Cheating is a skill that is very frowned upon in school. Don’t plagiarize, don’t look at another person’s tests, don’t tell people what is on the exam and so on. But, in the real world, do you know what this is called? Collaboration.

Cheating teaches people how to work together, how to help friends in a time of need and how to effectively use resources (including other people). It teaches students how to be discrete, who to trust, and how to identify who is the dirty little snitch. These are valuable skills every student will need to learn in their career.

Classes would include lectures on great historical cheaters such as: Bernie Madoff, Lance Armstrong and Shia Labeouf.

Students would learn how to effectively steal another person’s work, lie and take advantage of people.

The class would have many tests, but they wouldn’t be on anything taught in class. This way, students have to try and cheat. Using each other, smart phones, notes, anything they can in order to get ahead. But, if students are caught, then they lose points on their tests, so it is truly a test of cheating.

Homework would be a series of papers and projects. Papers would include topics on how people of history have gotten caught and how to prevent it in the future.

Projects could be anything: rigging games for financial gain, pyramid schemes, creating spam emails or even committing adultery.

Bonus points for ruining somebody else’s life.

Even more bonus points for betraying people in your group to get ahead.

Cheating is necessary skill for numerous careers. Business, law, politics, drug dealing, philosophy — all of these majors and more need to learn how to properly take advantage of every potential resource.

Cheating teaches students how to be open minded, think outside the box and do what is necessary to get ahead.

Think of where businesses like Enron, Facebook or the United States government would be today if they hadn’t cheated.

If we really want to “take on our world,” we need to learn how to “take our world.”