THE question that Egyptians seem to be asking themselves these days is: What has happened to our morals? From cheating to sexual harassment, the range of deviant conduct has become very wide. A minor incident, yet with significant implications, took place a few days ago. Among the measures taken by the recently appointed Minister of Education Zaki Badr in his attempt to restore discipline to schools was to hold a mock exam for high school students who are to sit for their final secondary school certificate exams in two months' time. Its purpose was merely to train students in the kind of analytical and memorising skills they need in order to obtain the scores entitling them to join a university. The students were surprised that a website had posted the trial questions a day before they took the test of each subject. It turned that the exams had been photographed with a mobile phone camera. Given the fact that these tests have nothing to do with the student's grades or any kind of assessment other than helping students to self-estimate their standard at this time of the year, the leaking of the exams is totally unjustified. If copies of these tests were sold, we would have assumed that making a financial profit was the purpose. We have to shamefully admit that cheating has become part of the testing process whether on the part of students or those that think that they are helping the students by giving them answers in advance. A somehow relevant story was reported recently about 300 businesspeople in 6th October Governorate who tried to evade paying the due taxes. However, they fell in the hands of a smart-looking fraudster who faked his ability to exempt them if he were to receive a handsome bribe. The number of 300 is actually surprising indicating a massive rather than an individual inclination to tread a deviated path. Scores of similar stories are related by witnesses and reported in the press pinpointing crookedness in many walks of life. But more importantly they indeed raise the alarm.
