It was the first Friday noon after entering April this year. The weather was beautiful as spring season had just begun. The sun at noon was as warm as the mild cold wind was cold. The squirrels were dancing all around while the birds were chirping on the trees. Despite the urge, nobody could go out and enjoy the afternoon. Whereas somewhere in the house, Lakshya was quite comfortable on his couch.
“Cheating is good'', exclaimed Lakshya. “Let me repeat myself, cheating is good. As far as you define ‘cheating’ properly”, he elaborated. Sitting on the couch in sweatpants and formal tie & shirt. A tub of chips in his right, and a couple of empty soft drink cans on his other side was enjoying his company. Lakshya was half well dressed with a laptop in his lap. As weird as it sounds, it was one of the Quarantine days due to the deadly and contagious virus COVID-19 which was spread worldwide. Similar to all the teachers and professors in India, Lakshya was giving online sessions by going live with his students.
Out of fifty students in the class, only twelve managed, or perhaps wanted, to take this online session. Even twelve was a surprise to him, as in such an unofficial vacation, no one would like to attend a session which isn’t even in the syllabus. Hopefully they must want to learn something valuable from Lakshya.
“Here, I’m considering cheating as a substitute for copying. Just like when you copy the answer of your friend in the test, and that is considered cheating, right?”, he explained his specific definition followed by a smile. Students giggled in front of their screens without agreeing nor denying. “Without a shame, copying is an important aspect of learning. You learned to talk by copying your parents, you learned to play games by copying your friends, you learned everything on your own in your childhood before you went to primary school by Copying, Imitating, Observing. What is important to know is that you copied and copied until you founded your own individuality, until you found your own voice, until you ‘learned’ talking, playing perfectly. You were watching the other kid riding a bicycle, you copied his way, you fell, you rode again, you fell again, and rode and fell several times until you stopped copying anymore. Until you learned riding a bicycle”
“But can’t I learn anything without copying anyone?” interrupted a student with curiosity. “Of course you can learn, why not? Suppose you have an urge to learn to make a birdhouse and you don’t know anyone who has made one before. In that case you will be finding out answers of all the questions that come in your mind on your own when you think of building a birdhouse. The advantage with copying someone’s work, to learn, is you only have to identify the answer of your questions from a well prepared answer sheet.” Lakshya took a sip of a soft drink by bending to the right side of the camera frame after he explained the student with an example.
Some students felt offended with his words. They debated that copying someone else’s work is not right as the person must have worked hard in finding out, what Lakshya prefers as, the answer of the questions. In answer, Lakshya responded, “Absolutely correct, no one should take credit for someone else’s hard work. But that’s not what I actually meant. If someone knows a work and you are trying to learn from them, then they are the teacher and you are the student for that moment. You are not copying to take credit of his/her work. You are copying to observe, interpret, evaluate and then come to a conclusion of how the work was done. That being said, don’t be certain that you will figure out everything on the first attempt. Pick out a bunch of similar work that you want to do. Start copying and rebuilding it again. Depending on the type of work, after several attempts you will be able to build a new one on your own. You will be running a marathon, not a sprint, on the road of learning something new.”
“Are you saying that we don’t have the unique ideas, thoughts, or the originality for learning something new? Do we always have to rely on someone else to learn?” a student rained a bunch of questions as he calmed down himself from the anger. “I knew this could be the reaction of some of you. The idea of copying is uncomfortable for many people. But actually copying is an innate human skill, one we need for survival. We copy to understand and learn to gain social status by mimicking others. They praise the different/unique over the general/common those who don’t propose a strong sense of authentic self. But one thing should not be denied by anyone that every single person breathing on this planet is unique in itself. Even if you are copying a work, you cannot interpret the same exact meaning out of that work that the original owner must have interpreted. In the process of learning by copying, you are continuously changing or modifying the small steps in your own way. For instance, you are copying a birdhouse but you don’t like the inclination of the rooftop it has. Now you will adjust it as you like. Merely this small change made that work totally yours.”
“Copying helps you not to get stuck in the thinking trap. People wait for some out-of-the-box type idea to pop-up in their head before they begin to work. The idea can come anytime. Even after when you’ve started. The hardest part of learning a new skill is to start off. Once done then everything seems to come to its place. High percentage of people stop at the beginning of attempting something new because they cannot figure out when, where or how to start something totally new without any experience, which can be scary for many people, or they cannot find a tutor, mentor or someone who could show them a path to walk on.”
“There are two types of copying”, Lakshya continued after a silent pause. “First, machine-like copying. Second, human copying. According to the author of Copy, Copy, Copy: How to Do Smarter Marketing by Using Other People’s Ideas, Mark Earls. The main point is to copy badly or loosely. To copy with the point of including variations or to fix known problems. That way you’re not just learning how the work was done, but you are also pursuing to make it better than it was. I heard a quote one day saying, ‘people still posted pictures on Facebook before Instagram came in trend.’”
The students looked convinced by Lakshya’s theory of ‘cheating’. Maybe not entirely but Lakshya decreased the negative opinion of those twelve students about copying others. They have now discovered an efficient tool to learn something new or to learn better. This Friday noon hour was more productive, for more than half of them, than the whole last week. Lakshya signed off by wishing everyone a good day and asking to make full use of these Quarantine days and to take a whole new skill and kick start the learning process.
Don’t hesitate to cheat ;)
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