Education: Spanish Cutlets

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The brains in Spain stay mainly on the plain of honorable cheating in the universities. Cheating on exams, nearly universal there, becomes dishonorable only when the cheater gets caught. Few realized how great a premium this risk placed on student ingenuity, however, until last month, when waggish José Antonio Suárez, the students' cultural-activities boss at the University of Barcelona, organized a public exhibition of chuletas. A chuleta (literally, cutlet) is academic slang for a crib note or, by extension, any cribbing device. Opposed by the University of Barcelona's brass, Suárez went ahead on his own. He proposed anonymity and return of chuletas to all exhibitors.

A Work of Handicraft. Divided into classical and modern sections, the show opened with 25 exhibits, drew hordes of admiring students and scores of professors who were torn by mixed emotions. In Suárez' opinion, the modern section was a bit of a flop: "A chuleta, to be worthy, must bear the imprint of the student's personality and be a work of Spanish handicraft."

The classical section was the eye-opener; it proved a smash hit and carried the show for a month-long run. Some crib notes were submitted attached to all manner of haberdashery and footwear (usually pasted on insteps). But first prize went to a crib note running on tiny rollers, all concealed in a matchbox equipped with apertures for covert reading. Second prize: an inch-square scrap of onionskin paper bearing complete summaries, in three colors of ink, of three subjects. Third prize: an innocuous-looking chunk of rock crystal, ostensibly a paperweight, actually, when viewed from the proper angle, a powerful magnifier of a series of chemical formulas.

Situation Normal. Emboldened by such an open airing of clever chuletas, some professors, far from trying to bury them, praised them. To Dr. José Maria Pi y Suñer, dean of the University of Barcelona's law school, a good chuleta is the mark of an alert student who has pored long and well over his lessons. Citing the exceptional case of a deaf student whose answers were perfect in an oral examination on canon law, Dean Suñer recalls that months later he learned that the lad's ears were as excellent as the grade he got. His hearing aid was actually a chuleta, a two-way phone with a wire running from the student to the back of the large classroom, where an accomplice, armed with a canon-law textbook, dictated flawless responses directly into the examinee's ear. Said Dr. Pi y Suñer: "If I had realized he was cheating at that time, I would have given him a double A. The fellow will go far!"

This week, all over Spain, most university students were busily cheating on their final exams. Reported a Madrid university professor serenely: The chuleta situation is "normal." Agreeing, Barcelona's José Suárez explained: "Passing an exam on the honor system would make the whole matter serious. How could one cheat after being honor-bound not to? It's better to be supervised. Then it's our wits against theirs."