When I was in elementary school there were two kinds of cheaters: The kids who needed to cheat because they were lazy or just plain dumb and the kids who were bright enough to pass everything without trying very hard. Notice that I said “two kinds of cheaters.” I was in the latter group and I can testify that the smart kids cheated just as much as the remedial ones. The difference is we never, ever got caught.

There was this one week in 3rd grade where we had a tough spelling test. Me and two other guys found books in the library with one of the tough spelling words printed on the cover or the spine. We left the books under our chairs during the test so the others could use them as a secret cheat sheet during the test. As I recall, it worked like a charm. I couldn’t remember how to spell “America” so I peeked at one of the books and got the answer.

As we pushed through to Junior High an interesting thing happened. While the teachers in elementary school had generally been young, bright-eyed, optimistic young women; the teachers in Junior High were embittered, apathetic, tired old shells of their former selves (there were some good ones in there but not many.) The school was undersized and overcrowded. It was dirty and uncomfortable. Parts of it had a mold problem. Some classes were held in mobile homes behind the school. It sucked to attend school there so I can only imagine how much it sucked to teach there. Many of the teachers had embraced a concept called “peer evaluation” in which we would switch papers with the person next to us and grade their work (usually it was homework such as grammar or spelling worksheets.) For the first time ever, the smart kids could help the dumb kids cheat and get away with it. I probably bumped my friend’s grade up by an entire letter that year on spelling tests alone (yes, they actually let us peer-grade spelling tests.) Alternatively, when I happened to grade the work of a kid I didn’t like I made sure to carefully mark every little mistake and accurately report the right score.

At the time we figured that the teachers didn’t know what we were up to. Now I realize that they probably did know. They just plain didn’t care. So much cheating went on at that Junior High that it produced a Freshman class in High School that could cheat like nobody’s business.

More stories from my shitty Junior High later this week…I’ve got a story about science class that still makes me cringe to this day.