Helping

"Helping" is not the same as giving out the answer to your friend on a test. Helping is arranging study groups or mock tests that prepare the struggling student for an upcoming assignment or exam. I do, however, completely understand where a "helping" situation might have presented itself when Jim Cooper wrote about it. Learning a new language is a hard task, and more so when you're simply thrown into a classroom and expected to walk out a fluent speaker. It can easily become frustrating trying to understand this new and strange language, and so the concept of "helping" can enter the picture. The term "copying" is more exact, but Puerto Ricans tend to strongly differ, as Cooper narrated. 

During the 1950's English was making its way to the Puerto Rican classroom and trying to hold its ground as a second language. For college level students, trying to learn this language proved to be a rather difficult task specially when it was so unfamiliar in many different ways. Since English was proving to make a long lasting appearance, the curriculum had to be formatted in order to accommodate it. Elementary students still had a fighting chance to learn it because their age made the learning quite easier. But, college and university level students had a much harder time trying to comprehend the language. And so, the ones that didn't understand stuck together and the ones that did helped in any way they could. If this meant "helping" them on tests and assignments, they were all for it. It was and probably still is a cultural thing to help out those in need no matter the cirmunstance. We, as Puerto Ricans, tend to give out a helping hand in any way possible to serve those that show they need the extra help. 

I've grown up with "helping" in classes all my life, and although I do understand the true and sincere intentions behind it, it think that the concept has gone through alterations through time. In the present, helping means that one person knows the material by heart and the one being helped is simply too lazy to study. He or she is probably likely to not have studied for the test and now wants a good grade; the solution presents itself in the form of copying from the teacher's pet or the nerd that spent the week before studying. And this is the part where I strongly disagree. Maybe I was the geeky nerd who studied the week away and that's why I dislike people that try to copy off of my test. I did all the hard work for somebody, who doesn't care, to cheat off of my test? I don't think so. As you can see I wasn't the easiest one to copy off of, but I always held my ground. I'm not trying to justify that copying back then was fair and now it isn't. All I'm trying to explain is that circumstances have changed and now English comes in a more natural way to us, so cheating should not come along so often.