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From: gilbert@aimmi.UUCP (Gilbert Cockton)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Cheating on Programming Assignments (Honor System)
Message-ID: <20@aimmi.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-May-87 08:40:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: aimmi.20
Posted: Wed May 20 08:40:56 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 23-May-87 09:52:34 EDT
References: <263@rruxa.UUCP> <1532@celtics.UUCP> <1501@uwmacc.UUCP> <493@herman.UUCP>
Reply-To: gilbert@aimmi.UUCP (Gilbert Cockton)
Organization: Heriot-Watt/Strathclyde Alvey MMI Unit, Scotland
Lines: 37

In article <493@herman.UUCP> version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site aimmi.UUCP aimmi!hwcs!its63b!ukc!mcvax!seismo!columbia!rutgers!dayton!meccts!herman!det det@herman.UUCP (Derek Terveer) writes:
>
>Unfortunately, it appears that you can go even farther than that, it differs so
>much from person to person in the US.  It seems that the US is enough of a
>cultural melting pot that i haven't been able to discern any kind of real
>"pools" of attitudes towards honesty.  Of course, i haven't been to too many
>places in the US either!  (:-)
>

I'm not sure that the melting pot argument accounts for everything,
especially as most countries have been melting pots at some time in
their development.

USENET readers in the States may be interested in a common European
analysis of the apparent lack of solidarity and communal consciousness
in the U.S. Roughly, the idea is that America has always been big
enough to allow people to move out rather than conform to group
pressures. If this is true, then years of pushing back the frontier
will have eroded the ability to toe the line for the sake of group
values. As America seems to be running out of space, this could cause
social problems in the decades to come, with only outside threats
developing any sort of cohesion (e.g. reds in Mexico, Arab missiles in
the Gulf etc.)

Note also though that Durkheim's analysis of mechanical and organic
solidarity proposes that any society with a highly developed division
of labour will tend to fragment into groups with differing and even opposing 
values. Thus all (post-)industrial societies are bound to be less
conformist than pre-industrial ones. What may have happened in European
colonies where the natives were pushed into reservations is that the effects
of the division of labour were amplified by the ease of running off rather than
shaping up, hence the rampant individualism which seems to characterise 
America and the white Commonwealth.
-- 
   Gilbert Cockton, Scottish HCI Centre, Ben Line Building, Edinburgh, EH1 1TN
   JANET:  gilbert@uk.ac.hw.aimmi    ARPA:   gilbert%aimmi.hw.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
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