Friday, February 27, 2015

An unreported German military academy cheating scandal

Nobody knows the thoughts we think.

That's our translation poeticized  of the German "Keiner weiß, wie der Landser tickt", a headline in FAZ of 2/27. The good people of FAZ put the article in the paper's Feuilleton section, which is a fancy French word for Entertainment, according to Mr. Webster.

Current students of the Hamburg Military University, one of two, the other being in Munich, got together and wrote about how aspiring officers of the German military feel, how they see the world, how they think the world sees them.

According to the article, much is said about how they feel undervalued by the "hedonist", individualistic, "laissez-faire" (French for I don't give a hoot) wider society. Afghanistan plays a huge role as the first German war after WWII. Kosovo didn't count, and Afghanistan is still not officially called a war pure and simple by the German government.

It is not easy to justify the K-Landnews TheEditor's take on the collection as "an utter waste of paper but a great larmoyant insight into a pampered, false hero sucky tome, the Sorrows of Gun-Toting Young Werther".
The rest of the staff here is more forgiving, seeing it as the obvious writing of young, idealistic soldiers trying to think big thoughts and - like the rest of us - not being very good at it. BTW, larmoyant is French for teary, or John Boehnery as we would call it in the US.

The FAZ article was the catalyst for reporting on a cheating scandal at the southern German counterpart of the Hamburg academy in Munich. According to our fully trusted source, this scandal was never reported in the media. Since our source learned of it in the late 1980s and early 1990s, either all or the vast majority of cadets are safely retired and you must regard this report as only historical.**

The cheating "scandal" was an uneventful routine thing, combination of lazy teachers re-using questions and engineering problems of mid-terms and finals. Students who sat the mid-term or the final passed the questions and correct answers and solutions on the next set of course participants.

Not all classes or professors were involved, of course.

** In case someone feels offended, please email the K-Landnews using the public encryption key from the post in the blog header.  Our source talked to some of the cadets at the time in question. Thank you.

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