[hmwhy]

Maybe I'm joining the large amount of comments at the bottom for once, but this article is not just about someone who ended up being a teacher due to serendipity — he committed crimes to get there.

I'm all for supporting people with disability, and there is no doubt that it requires courage to admit to being a fraud after so many years — but being dyslexic shouldn't be an excuse for anyone to commit crimes and get away with it (please read what he actually did if you haven't — it wasn't a simple case of cheating).

I have personally seen a lot of academic misconducts that went unpunished that makes cheating in exams seem seem mundane. Fake results that academics don't own up to/just blame their students when proven wrong; made-up results so that a thesis would look better; lying about publications to get scholarships, etc. Nobody ever gets punished and some would eventually go on to hold important positions.

Reading the "supportive" comments in this thread is pretty demoralising for me.

[hliyan]

I agree in principle. But I think there has to be a difference in punishment between unrepentant perpetrators who get caught, and perpetrators who come forward on their own volition. If I remember the original Reader's Digest article, this person was already held to account many years ago -- he lost all his credentials, qualifications and not to mention respect and credibility. Even the original story was published much later. If we continue to pounce on people like this many years after the fact, we're only discouraging others with a guilty conscience to come forward.

[hmwhy]

Thank you very much for taking the time to address my comment, it has given me some food for thought.

[baron816]

Yeah, this is kind of a Frank Abagnale type story. He did some incredible yet dishonest and criminal things, but redeemed himself later in life. I’m sure this guy bullied a lot of people to get them to help him cheat. He spent 40 years pretty much as an asshole—he had stolen a life that he hadn’t earned, and had deprived his students of a qualified educator.

Maybe the moral of the story is that people can change and become positive contributors to society. Think of all the people who have been locked up for decades for crimes they committed as teenagers. They were just thrown away by society without a chance for redemption. This is part of what Black Lives Matter means to me—there’s a primitive impulse in people’s brains to say they’re criminals and they won’t amount to anything and just cause harm. This guy got a chance that was denied to millions of black youths.

[dwohnitmok]

Speaking of... there seems to be a good chance that Frank Abagnale lied about lying and his biggest con has been making a career out of convincing people of his non-existent previous cons (which in retrospect isn't all that surprising I suppose, there's no a priori reason to believe that an ex-conman has been honest about his ex-cons).

It seems that he had only one big true con: where he conned a woman's family into taking care of him and stealing money from them while he essentially stalked her, was found out and then sent to prison.

https://whyy.org/segments/the-greatest-hoax-on-earth/

[jccalhoun]

Honestly, it sounds unbelievable. I absolutely can believe that people go through life without learning to read. I'm a college teacher and I've met them.

The lengths he went to in college, however, seem so incredible that I am skeptical. Stories like Richard Montainez's claims of inventing flaming hot cheetos and Frank Abagnale's claims of impersonating have been found out to be false so I need actual proof before I believe these kinds of stories are true.

[arp242]

This guy was born in 1939. These events happened in the 50s. It's been a long time, and at no point is the article saying of even implying it's a good thing: it's just some young person struggling to get by doing what he could because he thought it was the only way to get anywhere in life.

I don't understand why some people feel the need to be so damn judgemental and moralistic about things.

[tashi]

I haven't seen any comments that praise him for cheating or stealing or faking his way through being a teacher. The only praise I see is for his learning to read and then coming out to tell his story.

[iammisc]

I agree, what this man did was criminal. It doesn't matter how he felt about it, or the great redemptive arc the story talks about (him learning to read eventually), the truth is he short-changed a lot of children on a proper education.

[aaron695]

> he committed crimes to get there.

I don't consider cheating in exams a crime so I'll assume you mean breaking and entering.

I doubt the story, but I saw many people do similar breaking and entering for pranks at uni so have no real problem with that.

I also had access to a library of exams. Once I went to an exam to steal? a copy for next year, but I couldn't work out how to get it out of the room. This is what hackers do, test limits on conventional systems. I also did a lot of work.

You seem to be confusing a job (academia) with his life as an undergrad student, they are not the same.

He worked hard at Uni the way he/BBC tells it, that's good enough for me. I don't believe his story, I am sure it's not as clean as he says, but unless you have the info I'm commenting on the BBC tale.

[BeFlatXIII]

It’s a natural consequence of a culture that praises competition. “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying” is the motto of those who only have a tenuous chance at success. No point accepting your “just” lot in life: may as well cheat if the consequences from cheating aren’t that much worse than the expected quality of a life lived legitimately.