1402 Sweating Terms

You hear a lot about how the internet has transformed society. And one place it’s done so is in the area of research. It’s rare anyone actually goes to the library anymore to look up a book on the civil war or something. It’s even rarer a high school student reads such a book and gleans from it the necessary facts to string together sentences to establish a thesis to make a term paper.
Nowadays it’s go to the “thesis template” in a word processing program, Google the relevant search items, copy and paste from your search results, and voila, individual paper.
Plagiarized in many ways to be sure, but is that really any different than paraphrasing bulk passages from books? Well yes, because in the grueling paraphrasing process, you are assimilating that information into your brain. When you copy and paste blocks of barely read text you aren’t learning anything.
So I guess it was inevitable the next easy step would arrive at the doors of our technologically-coddled children. Pre-done homework. And cheap too. Why? Because it’s been outsourced.
That’s right, we’re outsourcing our homework. Is this the height of world-dominating luxury or what? According to the London Sunday Telegraph, there are now homework “sweatshops” in India, Pakistan, and Egypt that provide high school and college level essays, math homework, and other school assignments to students around the world for as low as $2 a paper.
Hmmm, judging by the command of English of some of the technical support people I’ve had with computer issues, I’m not sure I’d want a $2 composition essay.
But hey, it’s good we’re paying all those sweatshop workers to learn American educational stuff. They’ll need it.
One of these days they’ll have to run the world for us, too.
America, ya gotta love it.